


A Part Of Me I Can't Get Back

by EmilieHardie



Series: Give Me A New Religion [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Skye, Gen, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Skye is Tony's daughter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 58,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4861523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilieHardie/pseuds/EmilieHardie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: second fic in the series so summary contains major spoilers for first fic. Read at your own peril.</p><p>-----------</p><p>This is what it means to be a villain: you do as you're told, no matter what you're told.</p><p>If Skye never sees an Infinity Stone again, it would be too soon. It was her ability to find them that brought her to Thanos' attention. It was her ability that led him to invade Sokovia to back her into a corner and force her into a deal, even if it would protect the Earth from future invaders. It was her ability that led to her brother's death, even if Ultron isn't quite gone.</p><p>Unfortunatly, that means Thanos expects her to use that ability to track down the remaining Infinity Stones. No matter what it takes, no mattter what crimes she needs to commit, she will bring them back to Thanos. Earth's safety is riding on it. No doubt it will be hard but with a team made up of Loki, Ward and the Winter Soldier at her beck and call, she should be able to manage it. With that kind of backup, Skye's technically one of the most dangerous villains in the Galaxy.</p><p>So of course a team calling themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy are going to try and stop her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the second story of the Give Me A New Religion series.
> 
> Just in case you missed the anouncement in the Author's Notes of the previous fic, this series is now going to be six stories long. There is also a [ TvTropes page](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/SometimesIHateTheLifeIMade).
> 
> 1\. [Sometimes I Hate The Life I Made](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3805150/chapters/8505949)  
> 2\. A Part Of Me I Can't Get Back  
> 3\. Before We Say Goodbye  
> 4\. Stir Up The Beast Inside  
> 5\. A Ghost With No Soul  
> 6\. Peace In Our Time
> 
> My aim is to update every Sunday, with a two week break between different fics. When I'm late - not if - you have my full permission to harass me in the comments.
> 
> Also, this prologue is not a full chapter, just a repost of the end of the last series epilogue to ease you back into the story.

Skye didn't know whether it was reassuring terrifying to see that the visions she had gotten when she had first grabbed the Mind Stone were actually what Thanos is Dominion looked like. It was just as barren, just as alien, as she had seen it to be.

But she didn't care about that. What she cared about was the alien warlord sitting on his throne of stone.

"You wanted me. I'm here," she said, even though she knew that it was unlikely he would understand her.

She was right. His mouth pulled into what might've been a grin, but she didn't presume to know what his species, whatever it was, meant with their facial expressions. He said something, the sounds harsh to Skye's ears. Next to her and a bit behind to her left, Ward shifted slightly. At her right, the Winter Soldier was completely still.

"I can translate," Loki said. She didn't turn to him, but thought that she could hear some small hint of compassion there. It was a bit late for that; after all, he was the one who had been there to represent Thanos during the negotiations.

"Translate this: I am only here as long as he holds up his end of the bargain."

Loki spoke, repeating her words. For a moment, Skye thought that he was mocking her. But then Thanos nodded. Ah, there must be some kind of magic to his words, that meant that anyone who heard it could understand. Jemma would find that fascinating- She cut off that thought. Skye would probably never see her or the others again. She wasn’t going to torture herself by thinking of that she would never have.

She resolved to look more closely at his mouth the next time he spoke, see if the movement corresponded with the sounds she thought she heard. It was a pitiful distraction, and she didn’t event fool herself.

Thanos replied. Loki translated. "He wishes to know what he will call you," he said.

Skye held back a swallow. She would not appear weak in front of someone who had tried to invade the Earth. Nor would you give him her real name, just in case just in case- What, she had no idea. But nor would she give him permission to call the Quake. That was another person, someone who had been lying to her brother.

Without intending to, the heel of Skye’s palm pressed into the USB in her pocket. It bit into her skin, reassuring her that it was still there. That he was still there. That she had something left from her home, and perhaps a reason to go back.

But she still needed another name.

She made a decision. "Nemesis. He can call me Nemesis."

Skye would keep up her end of the bargain. For awhile. But, someday, she would make it back to Earth. Not for her, but for Ultron. He deserved a chance at happiness.

It would not be immediately. She would bide her time and do as she was told. Every minute that she stayed would be another minute that the Earth was protected. The cost was only doing the right thing, helping other people. It was a price she would pay.

So she would betray her principles, take orders from a warlord. She would let go of the part of her that used to think that superheroes - her Dad aside - were the coolest thing ever. She wasn’t pretending anymore; she wasn’t a mole. She was really a villain.

But she she would never forget that, by backing her into a corner with his invasion, Thanos had made his greatest enemy.

His Nemesis.


	2. Someday What's Lost May Be Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki is mischievious, Ward is annoying and Skye has more sympathy for Coulson now she's the one in charge.

The universe was a strange place, filled with wonders beyond human imagining.

Probably because they did unspeakable things to the concepts of common sense and the way the universe was supposed to work. There were things there that almost made Skye’s brain shut down from the sheer impossibility. Like a window in space. Leading to the bottom of an ocean.

“Why doesn't the water pour through the portal?" the Winter Soldier asked. He had asked Skye to call him James but that was so not going to happen.

"Magic." Loki didn't look up from the knife he was sharpening.

Skye felt as though she had heard this joke before. A Soviet assassin, an allegedly ex-Hydra mole and the Asgardian god of lies steal a spaceship…

She just wished she wasn't the punchline.

"Are you sure we can get through?" Ward asked, eyeing the portal was though it might attack him. He was staying towards the back of the empty space that formed the bulk of the ship, as far away from it as possible even if that left him near the rear ramp and that unidentifiable ans sticky stain that Skye really didn’t want to know about.

"Yes." Loki put away the dagger and produced another, curved where the other was strait. Skye tried hard not to think about what they were used for.

"But the water isn’t coming through," Ward said.

"Brilliant observation," Loki said. The scraping of the rough cloth that he was using to polish the knife made a slight snick each time he ran it against the length of the knife, a single graceful and proficient movement.

"It will work." Skye said, not looking at Loki. It wasn't a question; she was starting to get the Asgardian's measure. Once he answered a question it, it was best not to ask it again. He took offence, which was a little bit ironic considering he was the god of lies. He always expected to be taken at his word.

"Yes," Loki said. He finally looked up from his knife, just a quick flick of the eyes. Then he was looking back down again, and Skye could almost have fooled herself into thinking that she had imagined the appreciation there. Except it wasn't the first time she had caught Loki glancing at her like that. If it weren't for the fact that she was getting a very definite vibe of admiration rather than romantic interest, Skye would be starting to worry.

Skye spun around, squashing the childish bout of glee at the fum the rotating chair provided. It was the captain's chair, and the pilot's chair on such a small spaceship. It had to be her; Loki would never do anything as plebeian as pilot a ship, and neither Ward nor Winter Soldier had shown any kind of aptitude when it came to the difficulty of piloting a vehicle in 3D.

Skye thought they just hadn't played enough videogames.

“Here goes nothing,” she said.

“I regret everything,” Ward said, his voice completely and hundred percent sincere. Then again, it was Ward. Skye didn’t trust a thing that man said or did. The Winter Soldier grunted in what might have been agreement.

Loki said nothing.

Skye griped the lever firmly. She wasn’t entirely sure what species the ship had been designed for, but the grip was far too wide for her hand, but it did at least have a bar that she could hold on to. It took almost more strength than she had to push it solidly away from her, to increase the speed to the max. There was resistance there, so it was probable that the engines ran on something mechanical.

Her Dad would be outraged to learn that aliens were using such outdated tech for something as advanced a space travel. Skye didn’t care, all she cared about that was that worked.

The spaceship shuddered. Apparently, they hadn’t stolen something that was top-of-the-line. They had managed to steal a junker. It shuddered again, and Skye could picture the back of the engines, well of the exhaust ports, the flaring sides causing the whole ship to shake and shudder as they widened to let off the extra heat. It was probably only in her mind, but it did make her feel a little bit more at ease, to picture something that she had seen in a thousand cliched sci-fi movies.

The spaceship jerked, beginning to move forward. Skye had let the speed slow as they approached the portal, the scratching at the back of her mind from the after-effects of her pinging the Infinity Stone lessening slightly. She had been just as dubious as Ward and the Winter Soldier when she had seen the portal, had seen the fact that the water wasn’t coming through. But there was nothing else to do except try for it, so she tried.

After all, she wasn’t about to go back to Thanos empty-handed. There was far too much riding on their quest to unite the Infinity Stones to take that risk. She had only been Thanos’ minion for what felt like a month – not that she could tell in space – but she suspected he was really not the understanding type.

The spaceship hit a critical mass of acceleration, and the rivets on the side groaned as it pushed forward faster than the shoddy construction welcomed. Bits of rust floated lazily down, dislodged by the shuddering. Skye idly reflected that the ship ut have spent a lot of time planetside; metal couldn’t rust in space.

Well, Earth metal couldn’t.

Skye was really regretting not trying for the much nicer, must less likely to accidentally kill them, spaceship that they had passed on because of the increased security. Sure, they would be more likely to get killed while getting it but at least they wouldn’t have to worry constantly that the ship was going break and they would be sucked out into the vacuum of space.

At least, that was how Skye imagined it. All she knew about space came from movies.

All at once, they were slammed against the back of their seats by the sudden acceleration. Skye bit back a hiss of pain, largely because she didn’t hear any kind of exclamations from the back of the spaceship, probably because everyone there was trained and dangerous. Skye was trained, a bit, and she had superpowers but she was very acutely conscious of the fact that despite being in charge, she was the least scary person in the ship.

She really, really hoped that she would never have to go up against any of them, or that any of them challenged her authority. If she did, she would probably lose.

The spaceship slammed into the portal, and once again they were jerked by a sudden change of speed. Forward, that time, the deceleration sending them slamming towards the windshield. Skye at least had some kind of restraint, though she wouldn’t go quite so far as to call them seatbelts since they were more loops for her arms.

She was jerked to a stop, feeling more like a rag doll than anything else. The others behind her weren’t quite so well-prepared. The corner of her seat crumpled under the firm grip of the Winter Soldier, and Ward went skidding in front of her. She couldn’t see what Loki was up to but he was probably excellently balanced and completely composed.

At any other time, Skye would have found the look on Ward’s face hilarious. But the whole ship was groaning under the sudden increase in weight, going from the vacuum of space to the underwater pressure. It was easy to forget the weight of the water while swimming because it was working to keep her up. Being under it, Skye had a flash of understand of how immense the weight actually was.

It felt as though the air in Skye’s lungs had been knocked out of her, and was under the kind of pressure that compressed the air down into a tiny fraction of what had taken up before. In short, she felt as though she didn’t have anywhere near enough air to breathe, and no amount of determination to be tough guy could prevent her from wheezing.

She was only human, after all.

At least she wasn’t the only one doing it. Ward’s chest was heaving, his face turning a really unattractive red. The small part of her that still resented how he had fooled them all had a little snicker of nasty pleasure. Next to her, even the Winter Soldier was having difficulty breathing. Skye couldn’t see Loki, but she would bet that the alien was having nowhere near the trouble they were.

She couldn’t say how long it took her to get her breathing under control but, once she did, she finally had a chance to look through the windshield of the ship. Luckily, although it looked slightly distorted by the water, it was holding up. Because just outside was, well, ocean. It looked almost exactly like what Skye imagined the bottom of the ocean back on Earth would, except there was not a single living thing to be seen.

She shivered.

She had seen it before, or something like it. She had seen it when she had had visions of all the Infinity Stones, and Skye could remember what she had tried not to look at the particular time. That gigantic shape in the darkness. It might look as though there was nothing out there, but Skye was absolutely certain that somewhere out there that was a monster that could take them down. Even Loki.

That could wait though. There was no use borrowing trouble. Skye took a deep breath, trying not to lose too much confidence when panicking was the easiest thing in the world. She pushed harder on the throttle, feeling the burn in her arms and strain on her shoulder. Clearly, whatever species had designed the spaceship, it was much stronger than she was and so the resistance in the controls was stronger.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the spaceship shuddered into life again. It had slammed to a complete stop a few metres into the water, but Skye had been too busy trying to suck in enough oxygen to notice. But the spaceship was holding up, and it was beginning to move in the direction the itch at the back of her mind told her was the way to the Infinity Stone.

Maybe things would be okay after all.

Something hit the side of the spaceship hard. The craft went spiralling, and Skye instinctively grabbed the arms of the chair, even though the straps would absorb the worst of the shock. She wasn’t going to go flying out of the chair, and hit the wall like Ward did. Next to her, the Winter Soldier still held on. Later, she would probably reflect on how impressive that was but she had more immediate priorities.

“What the hell was that?” Ward snarled out, as the ship began to steady.

As if on cue, a huge… thing swam out from the right of the windscreen, less than an arm’s length away from the spaceship. They had a terrifyingly close look at what it was. She would have preferred ignorance.

Skye had thought she had seen a lot of scary things – not the least of them was an alien warlord bent on, well, she wasn’t entirely sure what, but she would argue any day that Thanos was one of the scariest things she had ever seen – but the creature was pretty damn scary too.

For one, it was huge. It was the size of a large whale, possibly a bit more. It had the same rough shape too, dumpy and wide, but tapering towards tail. That was where the resemblance stopped. Aside from that, it looked like a gigantic cockroach that had mutated to develop fangs. Not small fangs either but full on walrus tasks, except with even more of an edge.

Damn, it was scary.

“You had to say something,” the Winter Soldier snarled. “Don’t you know that’s the last thing you should be doing?”

“Come on, you can’t actually expect me to take responsibility for that thing.”

Loki moved into Skye’s field of view, looking out at the cockawhalerus- Skye couldn’t believe she actually thought that. He looked faintly bored, as though he had seen scary things a thousand times before. “It could be worse.”

Skye sighed. “Now that you’ve said that–”

The Winter Soldier nodded. “Guaranteed to get worse.”

“Oh, come on.” Ward sneered, picking himself up off the floor. “It’s not like this some kind of being out there that is listening to us and deciding to piss us off by–”

“I would not be so sure of that,” Loki said.

Skye stared at him, her head whipping around. “Wait, you mean–”

“I’ve not seen such a being, but I have ample evidence to suggest that one exists. Some cruel, capricious God.”

“As interesting as this theological discussion is,” Ward interrupted, “surely we have more important things to think about. Like say getting to this Infinity Stone without being eaten by whatever the hell that thing is. I mean, if we wanted we could properly try and were Thanos here and watch him go one-on-one with that…” He seemed a loss for words. He rallied. “Whatever that thing it is.”

They all looked at the cockawhalerus. Six small and spindly legs - conparatively - wriggled in the water as it continued away from them. Skye shuddered. Apparently, insects were no less creepy when they were huge.

“I don’t think I want to know which one would win,” Skye said. But Ward had a point. Hanging around and staring at the pretty scary cockawhalerus was not going to make it go away, and it was going get them any closer to the Stone. She didn’t think that Thanos would take too kindly to delays that were not completely unavoidable.

He had not been particularly impressed with her lack of training. She suspected it was representative of his general attitude and expectancies. You had to be the best in the universe, or he would push until to became so or died. Either worked for him. She suspected no one became one of the most feared beings in the galaxy – an assessment Loki had confirmed – by being understanding.

“Let’s get into the spacesuits,” she said, in lieu of mediating argument. She supposed that she probably should, she was technically in charge. She was also not particularly keen on pressing the boundaries on seeing what she could get away with.  If her authority was based entirely on the fact that Thanos had chosen her to be in charge, well, that was not something she wanted to find out so far away from the warlord.

She really, really hated all this power play. She wanted to get back to her computers. Lines of code didn’t require playing off each other.

“We’re not done with this,” Ward said, glaring at Loki. Skye wasn’t entirely sure what his deal was, but he seemed to have taken a very distinct loathing to Loki. She wondered if he was holding a grudge for New York, in which case it would be pretty hypocritical of him to complain about a villain.

“Awesome,” Skye said. “It can wait until we’ve finished with this mission.  Want this done as soon as possible.”

“Good,” the Winter Soldier said. Because I think we have company.”

Skye would have shot out of her chair and to the front windscreen to see what the Winter Soldier had seen, but she was still tied down. She fumbled with the seatbelt, swearing a little as it refused to release easily, then skidded off the seat when she finally got it. It was probably ungainly, but she didn’t give a damn. She had priorities.

She managed to stop herself a second before she slammed into the front windscreen. It wasn’t restraint on her part, it was the fact that she wasn’t entirely sure it could take the hit. Next time, they were definitely not stealing the junker. Her stop was considerably helped by the fact that the Winter Soldier reached out his flesh arm and grabbed her. She really hoped it was to help rather than to hinder her.

There, hanging about ten meters off the sea floor, was another spaceship. It was orange, and looked  vaguely like a bird of prey. There was no mistaking it for anything other than someone else trying to get what they were going for. They were also after the Infinity Stone.

“Hey the guys, we’ve got company.”

The stakes were too high for Skye and the others to lose the Infinity Stone. She had already given up too much. She had too much on the line.

 

“Why do I have to be the one who does the advance scouting?” Ward demanded. On anyone else, it would have sounded like whining. Instead, while there was an edge of petulance, it just came off as arrogant.

“Because you’re the most expendable,” Loki said. The Winter Soldier snickered.

“The hell I am!”

The metal arm groaned as the Winter Soldier pressed his metal fist into his flesh palm. Even the organic one had some serious strength behind it. “You want that proven, buddy?”

Ward was apparently smart enough to not pick a fight with the Winter Soldier unless he had to. He turned to Skye but she headed him off. “I’m in charge.” He shot her an incredulous look. “Hey, someone’s got to be the brains of the outfit around here.”

“Indeed,” Loki said as he brushed some imaginary dirt off his armor. “Someone must make up for the negative intelligence in this area,” he said. He didn’t look at Ward, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that who he was talking about. Seriously, what had they butted heads about? Skye was beginning to think that they might actually be an issue she has to deal with.

She was beginning to feel some serious sympathy for AC. Never mind external problems, personal issues were becoming the bane of her existence, and she only had three people to work organise.

“Fine,” Ward grumbled. “I’ll go scout. But don’t think any of you are getting the credit if I find the Infinity Stone first.”

“Yeah,” the Winter Soldier said. “None of us are we getting the credit because Nemesis will.”

As ever, it took Skye a moment to realise he was referring to her. The name that she had chosen for herself on the spur of the moment when she had first stepped through the portal hit her in the gut once again. It was too melodramatic for her preference, now that she had a moment to think about it. But she had said it and she was stuck with it. She just didn’t think that any of the others had to be calling her by it.

Then again, it could be that the Winter Soldier was trying to make a point. If she wasn’t going to call him James, then he was going to call her Nemesis. That was a hypothesis to consider at a later date. She had far more pressing issues.

“You have one of the headsets?” she asked, even though the term headset was absurdly generous. The things had been made for a completely different species and they had spent more than a little time at the beginning of the voyage slowly pulling the whole things apart and taking out the bits that were actually for transmission. Not a single one of them could have fitted the original things on their head.

In response, Ward lifted the monster of a gadget that was the end result of their tinkering. As it turned out, the three companions that Skye was stuck with were all incredibly dangerous. They are also complete pants at building anything, or it figuring out electrics.

Skye suspected that, sooner or later, she was can be the one who was stuck with figuring out the maintenance of the Winter Soldier’s arm. She had already had to put a couple of bits and pieces back into alignment when he had insisted on beating up a species that was pretty much invulnerable.

“Just don’t lose it,” she said lamely. They both knew that Ward was the last person who was going to lose his communications device. He might not be the squared away SHIELD agent she used to think he was, but he was impeccably skilled. Skye was more likely to lose hers than he was to lose his.

“Try not to miss me too much,” he said with a wink as he jumped down into the hole in the floor on one side of the rough empty and industrial space at the back of the spaceship. There was nothing luxurious about the whole thing, and that was reflected in the fact that there was no ladder or way out of the pit.

Skye had no idea how they were going to get back into the ship when they had finished out there. Maybe they were just going to have to get Loki to toss her up. She turned back to the control panel, reaching out to press the button that would close the door above the pit and open the floor to dump all Ward out into the ocean.

A hand closed around her fingers, gently. Skye looked up at Loki. His expression was soft for a moment, then he broke into a wicked grin. He had been the one who had helped her press every single button on the thing to try and figure out what each and every one did. He was the person who probably knew how to fly the spaceship best, after her. She had no doubt that he had figured out some little tricks to it that she hadn’t, and he was about to live up to his reputation as a mischief maker.

He pressed a different button.

Some kind of thick, viscous liquid, probably oil or something like it, spurted out of the sides of the pit in a single thick cloud. Ward yelped, and Loki snickered. Skye cracked a small smile, but it disappeared as quickly as she realised why the whole scenario felt so familiar. It felt almost exactly like it had those first few weeks on the Bus.

It felt like they were building a new team.

Skye was not cool with that.

“What the hell?” came Ward’s voice from the pit.

“Come now,” Loki said. “You will be able to wash it off soon enough.”

Ward looked outraged. “I’m not even wearing my spacesuit yet.”

And indeed he wasn’t. Ward was still wearing the leather like material that Thanos had provided them with. There had been ready-made suits, but all of the humans had chosen to modify theirs to suit them. There had been armour on the others that was far too heavy for them to use practically, and that metal had severely limited their movements. It had been impractical.

And it had be a little bit of rebellion, the small but they had allowed themselves, even though none of them had said as much.

“Oh dear. My mistake.” Loki didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Skye squashed what small amusement she felt. It was mean, and it was a bad time and place to do it. Skye was not impressed.

Really.

“You don’t have the time to wash,” she said briskly to Ward. She took a few steps over to where the spacesuits were hanging and pulled one off the hook. The material was thick and hard, and nothing like the spacesuits that Skye was used to seeing on TV. Loki had assured them that they would hold up underwater.

She walked over to the pit and passed it down to Ward. Her first thought was to chuck it down, but she thought better of it. She crouched down and passed it over carefully, trusted that he would get the message. That while she was not going to reprimand Loki, she did not approve of what he had just done. It had seemed like a fun idea until it had actually come to pass.

Ward watched her assessingly, then nodded slowly. He got the message, or at least he had gotten some message. Skye returned the nod. She didn’t trust him, she would never trust them again. But of all the people in the ship, he was the one that she had known the most. He was the most known quantity even if what she knew wasn’t necessarily good.

“You got my back, rookie?” he asked.

“Absolutely not.”

Ward laughed as he pulled the spacesuit over his gunk-soaked leathers. “Just keep telling yourself that. You’d miss me if I was gone, Skye.”

She snorted then tilted her head to the side. There was something that had been bothering her for however long since they had left Earth that she hadn’t had the chance to ask. “How did you know to find me?”

He looked up questioningly even though they both knew that he knew exactly what she was talking about. “When?”

“When you first joined up with Ultron. How did you know where to find me?”

He closed the fastenings – part zippe,r part button – of the spacesuit. “Coulson,” he said it last. “He was desperate enough to asked me for help. Clearly he didn’t think anyone else would be able to get in and help you.”

Skye hummed. She realised she sounded like an idling computer. It made sense, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was missing something. “But why are you here? The last time I saw you before this, I shot you.”

“Oh, you know me. Forgive and forget, live and let live.”

Skye scoffed. “Oh, bullshit. You have an ulterior motive. You always have an ulterior motive.”

Ward pulled up the hood to cover his face, lowering the attached visor that fused seamlessly with the material of the suit. Completely encased, he spread his arms. “And what ulterior motive is it you think I’m trying to achieve, here on the far side of the galaxy?”

He had her there. It was a logical point, but Skye still couldn’t help the intense feelings that he was up to something. “You didn’t have a chance–”

“I could have run,” he said seriously. “I didn’t. I came here. Isn’t that enough to prove to you that I want to help you?”

Skye looked at him, really looked at him. Even in the strange material, his face tinted yellow by the visor, he was still as handsome as an action star. He looked all that was good and helpful and all-American. The good guy. Skye didn’t believe any of it. She knew what he was, had seen the real him when he had wanted to keep it from her.

But they were still halfway across the galaxy, and Skye had no choice but to trust him. It was that, or trust Loki. Or Thanos. Or any one of the uncountable number of dangerous people out there. There were many people who could hurt her, not many who would help. She would have to be suspicious, but Ward at least was a known quantity.

He had that creepy stalker like fascination with her, sure, but she would never believe that alone was enough to lure him away from Earth. He had to know that it was probably a one-way ticket. Her heart seized. She pressed her hand against the pocket that contained a particularly USB, encased in a small but durable box she had gotten at Thanos’s.

She wasn’t taking any risks with what remained of her brother.

“No,” she said. She would give Ward nothing less than complete honesty. It wasn’t about being a good person; it was her way of sticking it to him. “It isn’t enough.”

Ward flinched slightly. For a moment, the reflection of the low lighting reflected off this visor, obscuring his expression. Then he moved so she could see him and his face was determined. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find what will be.”

The cover of the pit slammed shut. Skye reared back in surprise, turning to glare at Loki. “We were talking,” she said, trying to keep her temper under control as much as possible.

Loki’s mouth twisted into a sly smile. “And what an admirable job you were doing of winding him up, but your toy will not skitter off on its own unless you let it go.”

Skye blinked. “I wasn’t-”

A short bark of laughter burst out from the Winter Soldier. “Of course you were.”

But Loki was watching Skye closely. “If it was not intentional,” he began slowly. Skye noticed the ‘if’. “If that was the case, you should be careful what you say. Elsewise, you might not be so fond of what he will do in your name.”

Skye swallowed but straightened out of her crouch, stretching out her muscles. “I can handle Ward.”

The Winter Soldier looked at her, almost pityingly. “Yeah, doll. That’s what we were saying.”

Skye was saved from having to respond by one of their canabalised communicators buzzing, then by Ward’s staticky voice coming through. “I’m in some sort of structure.”

Skye took the opportunity to snag the communicator and walk over to the windshild. She looked down at the ruins and frowned. It was hard to see through the water but there seemed to be a mismatch of materials making up the ruins. Some were stone, some a rusted metal and some glass. Something niggled at the back of her mind. Probably the Infinity Stone.

“Ward, can you see the Stone?” she asked. There was no response. Skye frowned. Surely he wasn’t holding their conversation against her. “Ward?”

The mechanical monstrosity in her hand crackled to life. An unfamiliar voice spoke, a faint midwestern twang to the words, though that might just be their new language implants. “I’m sorry, he can’t come to the phone right now. May I take a message?”

Skye sucked in a breath. “Proof of life,” she blurted out, fragments of a thousand kidnapping lectures courtesy of Happy running through her mind. “We demand proof of life or we won’t negotiate.”

There was a crackle and a hiss. Out of the corner of her eye, Skye could see the other two suiting up as quickly and efficiently as possible. The tension was so thick that Skye could barely breath.

Then a familiar - if infuriating - voice came across the airwaves. Ward sounded furious. At himself, at Skye or at his captors, she couldn’t tell. It didn’t stop him from giving her a sitrep - situation report, the jackbooted nazi.

“I’ve just been captured by a raccoon in a swimsuit holding a gun bigger than he is,” Ward informed her.

Wait, what?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I just couldn't get it to end at the spot that I wanted. Ah, well, this will do.
> 
> Schedule of remaining chapters:  
> \- chapter 1: 27th of September 2015  
> \- chapter 2: 4th of October 2015  
> \- chapter 3: 11th of October 2015  
> \- chapter 4: 18th of October 2015  
> \- chapter 5: 25th of October 2015  
> \- chapter 6: 1st of November 2015  
> \- chapter 7: 8th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 8: 15th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 9: 22nd of November 2015  
> \- chapter 10: 29th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 11: 6th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 12: 13th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 13: 20th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 14: 27th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 15: 3rd of January 2016  
> \- chapter 16: 10th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 17: 17th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 18: 24th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 19: 31st of January 2016  
> \- chapter 20: 7th of February 2016  
> \- epilogue: 14th of February 2016


	3. You Don't Decieve Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is suspicious but never of the right people for the right reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. It's been one of those fortnights. On the plus side, that means I'm likely to have a lot more free time for the next week or two to get caught up again. I'm not going to change the schedule, I'm just going to consider that I owe you guys two chapters, so you're likely to get surprise mid-week chapters at some point. I can't guarantee that it will be soon, it will just depend on when I have two chapters ready in the same week so that putting out one mid-week won't delay the Sunday chapter.

The oddly American voice came back over the coms.

“There’s your proof of life. Now, how about you tell us who you are and what you’re up to.”

Skye saw red. How dare they kidnap a member of her team, even if she wasn’t too fond of him? Ward was her responsibility and she was going to track down whoever had thought it was a good idea to take him and kick their ass for undermining her team. It wasn’t caring, really; it was the principle of the thing.

But they didn’t mean she was going to let them know that. “Us?” she asked, trying to buy time to come up with a good story.

She could practically hear the guy on the other ran rolling his eyes. “No, the other team who we are holding a member of their team hostage. Yes, you.”

Skye bit back something snarky. She couldn’t afford to piss them off, particularly if she was planning on trying to catch them by surprise later. She had to be mature about the situation. Restrained.

It was a good thing Ward wasn’t there, because he would probably have some choice things to say about the fact that his safety rested on Skye’s ability to control herself.

“Adventurers,” she said. “We’ve got a bit of money to burn and there were no jobs on our home planet,” she continued. She really hoped the idea of having a job translated across the universe, and that they wouldn’t  think to ask what her team’s home planet was. Skye didn’t have any idea what would be a convincing answer, since she didn’t want to draw the attention of any more aliens towards Earth.

“Yeah? So, what? You decided to come down to this planet?” the voice asked. For a second, Skye was confused. What did that have to do with– ah. It was a trap.

“No. We saw this big-ass portal in the middle of space, and the water wasn’t spilling out of it.” She shrugged, even though the person on the other end can see her. Hopefully it, or whatever the equivalent gesture was, would translate into her voice. “It looked like an adventure.”

There was a small laugh at the other end. “Yeah, it did at that. Still, its a shame.”

“What?” Skye asked, tensing a little bit.

“Oh, that you lied. If you just answered honestly and said what you’re after, we might have considered working together. But the fact that you tried to pull one over on us means that I’m not going to trust you.”

“We’re not–”

“Enough. I don’t want to waste my own time any more. Leave now and we will drop off your friend at the planet of your choosing once we’re done here.”

Skye only just refrained from grinding her teeth. Of course whoever was on the other end would make sure that they were gone as quickly as possible. If they too were after the Infinity Stone, they would know that anyone else coming for it could be dangerous. Or desperate, or both.

The idea of leaving Ward there on his own was making Skye desperate, even though it wasn’t all Ward’s abduction. It was everything, made all the more pressing by losing a member of the team. She supposed that she had motivation, if not quite desperation, to do what Thanos wanted. She rather thought she knew better than to not achieve that.

The Galactic warlord was unlikely to be forgiving.

“Knowhere, she said, picking somewhere dangerous but fairly anonymous, at random. She had heard of it, though she had yet to go there. She wasn’t going to leave Ward through the portal willingly, but if she had to, at least there would be a place for her to pick him up.

Unless Skye completely screwed up what she was about to do.

“Done. Now get out of here,” the voice on the other end said. The coms clicked off.

Skye threw hers at the wall. It was an expression of pure frustration but she still should have known better, because they had cannibalised the headset from so many things. It wasn’t well made, and it shattered easily as it hit. At least they had more.

“I take it we’re leaving,” the Winter Soldier said. It wasn’t a question.

Skye looked at the wall for a second, before looking at Loki. She had no idea who was down in the ruins, but she highly doubted that they would be any match for the Asgardian god of mischief. She would almost feel sorry for what she was about to do to them if she hadn’t been quite so furious.

“Get Ward back,” she told him. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if Loki was going to complain because of the animosity that was clearly between him and Ward. He didn’t, just nodding and heading over to the space suits. He wrinkled his nose at the texture – or possibly the colour – but he pulled it quickly over himself, the armour melting away from under the fabric as he pulled up.

“Shall we meet back here?” he asked. Skye couldn’t help but be glad that he wasn’t stalling, or trying to make a problem where there was none. Odd, that the most reasonable villain in her team was the one who had come the closest to committing the greatest atrocity.

“Yeah. I don’t think that they know where we are. They probably caught Ward by surprise.” Skye didn’t want to consider the possibility that they might have overpowered Ward. It was one of those things that kept the wider universe making sense; Ward was still a dick, but a dick who could take care of himself.

Loki continued to watch her, his face inscrutable. Skye couldn’t suppress the shiver that went down her spine.  She was very much aware that he was – metaphorically – a wolf. She couldn’t help feel as though he was just waiting to gobble her up.

The Winter Soldier dropped a hand onto her shoulder, and Skye jumped. An embarrassing squeak made its way out of her mouth and she clapped both hands over it. “Careful, doll. If you are still this jumpy out there, you might give us away.”

Skye glared at him. “I’m not a complete amateur at this you know,” she said. “I have been an agent myself.”

“I know.” The Winter Soldier was kind enough to not mention how much higher the stakes were compared to what Skye had been used to. Once upon a time, she had been an agent of SHIELD. She wasn’t anymore. She was a villain, and in the employ of a galactic warlord. She knew all too well just how precarious her position was.

She would still rather not leave Ward behind if she had any say in the matter. Skye was better than that. She would always be better than that.

Loki nodded at her, his face gentling. He was clearly ready to go out and do… whatever he was planning on doing. That was the thing about Loki. He hadn’t complained anywhere near as much as Ward had, and been anywhere near as much trouble, but Skye didn’t trust that for a second. He was, well, Loki. He was still the Asgardian who had made his way into the legends of the Vikings, he was so untrustworthy.

She didn’t know how much she could take of that as a sure thing, but she certainly wasn’t going to ignore it.

“Go. Get Ward.” It was brisk and it was to the point. She hoped that it conveyed the urgency without making her seem any weaker. Skye knew that, no matter how little problems they were giving her at that particular moment, the villains could begin to get dangerous at anytime. Showing weakness, especially so far away from Thanos, was a guarantee for trouble.

Pepper’s face swam before her eyes. Skye pushed it away; she didn’t need the reminder of why she was doing it. She didn’t care what others thought about her; Skye was protecting Earth, no matter what it took.

Quietly, she murmured to herself: “I’ll get the Infinity Stone.”

 

Loki would like to think that he was one of the most wily people in the universe, but the situation he was in was stretching even his legendary creativity. Back on Midgard, he had been trying to stay as closely as possible the script. As long as he had a good idea what was going to happen, he had the advantage.

But it was infuriating to have to do everything all over again.

Loki waited impatiently as the external chamber slowly, in fits and starts, flooded with water. Not a being in the universe could see him but he kept himself perfectly still, holding in the growl of frustration that was clawing at his throat.

Someone who knew what they were talking about had once told him that the only secrets that stayed secret were the ones kept inside. It hadn’t been given as advice, but Loki took it as such.

As with many things, Loki’s impulse to take the place of his past self had felt like a good idea at the time. What he hadn’t realised was just how much everyone had changed, so slowly that they hadn’t noticed it at the time. Every one of them was infinitely younger, even Skye.

He hadn’t noticed it when he had been watching her negotiate with the older him, so caught up in the nostalgia… and the fear. There was so much at stake. Literally the fate of the universe. And, this time, he wasn’t going to lose.

Not even to the most dangerous being in the universe.

The outer hatch opened, dumping Loki into the ocean. For a second, he let himself adjust to the buoyancy. Even if he hadn’t already known that the water was salty, the support the liquid offered him would have told him that anyway.

Once he was adjusted enough that he felt he could navigate easily, Loki began swimming towards the ruins looming darkly in the distance with strong, hard strokes. He was not worried in the slightest by Ward’s danger; the man always came out up on top eventually, no matter how bad the situation.

Besides, Ward was an enemy here. Not in the immediate term – his support for Skye would help keep her alive, which Loki needed, wanted – but eventually Loki was going to have to take Ward down some dark alley, and kill him.

Let no one ever say Loki was a hero, even when trying to save the universe.

Over the coms all was quiet. Loki expected that. At that particular moment, Barnes and Skye would be getting suited up, probably also figuring out their plan of attack. Metaphorically speaking.

He considered briefly whether he should tell them exactly where they would find what they were looking for but decided against it. It would raise too many questions, particularly those that Loki wasn’t prepared to answer. He knew what was going to happen and he also knew the risks of letting on that he knew.

There were too many things in the future that they should never know. And if he had his way they would never need to.

He arrived in the ruins almost before he knew what was going on. He had learned to swim in the sparkling seas of Asgard, seas that no planet could ever match, not their beauty and not the strength of their tides. The ocean he was swimming in was a pale comparison. It was no for match his strength.

Loki tried not to look too hard at his surroundings. He would never of known what he was looking at if… But that didn’t matter. Time travel was not a cure-all, and it made the suffering all the worse because he knew how much had to be changed for it to have never happened. And yet, he couldn’t change too much.

Walking a fine line should be for tricks, not for the fate of the world. And, somewhere, his Skye was in terrible danger, possibly even dead already, in as much as time travel allowed. Her, the friend who had helped him when no one else had thought he was worth it. The friend who had saved him.

He would not fail her. Nor would he fail the past her, even when it came to protecting Ward. Loki owed her that much.

Even as he swam along what was once a main boulevard, Loki wracked his brains, trying to remember exactly how everything had occured. It hadn’t been that long ago, but he was old and he had a lot of memories. At the time, he hadn’t realised that he might need to remember it all someday. He hadn’t been paying as close attention as he should have, and that was something that was hard to admit.

At least he didn’t have to admit it aloud.

He quickly found what he was looking for. An old steel door half buried beneath slimy green rubble, rusted and unlikely to last much longer, but it had lasted long enough. Whoever had made it had known what they were doing, almost good enough to match some the finest craftsmen in all the Nine Realms.

Loki concentrated hard, phasing through the metal. The smallest parts of his being separated from each other, connected but loose enough that they could slip through the gaps between the particles that formed the door’s matter. It was a neat little trick, and an exhausting one. He wouldn’t be doing it again, wouldn’t have done the first time except for the risk of the water flowing in if he opened the door.

He dropped like a stone, the stale air providing no support unlike the water outside. Loki twisted as he fell and landed in a neat crouch. He rose, grimacing. The last people to enter – the Guardians of the Galaxy – had not been as careful as he. A layer of water a good thirty centimeters deep hid the floor from view.

Loki didn’t bother to suppress the roll of his eyes. It had been quite some time since he had fought the Guardians, but he had worked with them more times than he could count. Not thinking about something as basic as nearly flooding the area behind the door was exactly something they would do. Had done, before and again.

Time travel. Loki was regretting more and more. He knew why he had done it, and he would do it again. The stakes were too high not too. Still, annoyances tended to be compounded when they were reoccurring ones. Even if the only person they were reoccurring for was him.

It was not an easy thing to wade through the water. Loki grimaced. He would do better if the place was completely flooded; his strength when it came to swimming would serve him well. But he couldn’t remember if the Guardians had taken off their own spacesuits. What? He was good, but he had a lot of memories in there. He couldn’t remember everything.

He wasn’t going to risk drowning some of the few allies who might actually be useful in the fight that was to come. Bad practice, that.

He dived for the water-covered ground.

Loki couldn’t say what it was had that alerted him to danger. Perhaps it was even just a lifetime of experience with Thor spontaneously jumping out at him with sharp weapons. Loki felt a pang, a longing for the younger, more carefree Thor.

He didn’t let the thoughts consume him, instead spinning around, flipping a knife out of its wrist sheath and slamming the dagger into the wall right where a hand had been a moment before. He grinned at Gamora, not bothering to soften it. His face was naturally composed of hard lines and, on those occasions where he was trying to be reassuring or charming, it took effort. It was effort he never made for Thanos’s favourite daughter.

“Lady Gamora,” he greeted. “Such an unexpected surprise,” he lied.

“Loki,” she growled. “Still Thanos’s dog?”

She hadn’t said that the last time. Then again, Loki hadn’t been nearly as carefree then. He had been working with a Midguardian he didn’t admire half as much as he would come to, and had still been forced to answer the Thanos. But he couldn’t let on that it was his choice now, not even to the assassin who had managed to break free from the warlord.

Some risks just shouldn’t be taken.

“I hear you have taken up with thieves and murderers,” Loki said. He hadn’t known that the first time, but it was something that would enhance his mystique rather than raise suspicions. “I would not be so quick to judge with whom I keep company, were I you.”

She snarled, the knife fairly shooting from her hand as she threw it at him. Loki spun, just enough for the weapon to flash past him; all dodging should be done with the minimum amount of energy. One never knew how long a fight may last. Loki did not pressed his advantage.

“Now, that is not very friendly,” he said, not even losing the smile on his face. Gamora frowned. Loki, too, would have been surprised had he found himself so cheerful in a situation that he was meant to be in. If nothing else, Thanos’s former daughter was not an idiot.

“Have you made your peace with doing as Thanos commands?” she asked. It was an engaging question, one at which he could expound at length. He had, before.

Before he had known that she had been stalling him so one of her allies could attack him from behind.

Loki ducked, spinning around to plunge his curved knife  into the back of Drax the destroyer’s knee. The Guardian howlled in pain, and no small amount of surprise. Loki should not have been able to see him coming, except if he had been projecting. But, if he had been projecting, then the one talking with Gamora probably would have been the fake. It should not have been able to attack.

On second thought, he rather enjoyed being one step ahead of everyone. It was so much more relaxing when one knew where the surprises were.

“Now, that is no way to treat a friend,” he admonished, and belittlingly as possible. On second thought, he may toy with these two a little longer. After all, Ward could do with being shaken up. And, should Skye ask, he had been trying to save him. It was just that he had been waylaid by the ‘enemy’.

“We were never friends,” Gamora snarled. “I did not like you; and you hadn’t the freedom of will to be able to form a relationship.”

Loki suppressed a shiver. She was correct, of course. Back then, he hadn’t been able to do so. “True,” he said, ignoring Gamora’s frown of confusion. “But then no one could say that you or Nebula had freedom of choice either. And yet you call her sister.”

Gamora’s teeth gritted. Loki considered that a win. “Do not talk about my sister.”

Loki let his smile have teeth. “And why not? Have we anything else to talk about? After all, we’re not friends. Should we not focus on small talk?”

The Destroyer windmilled a punch towards Loki, who slid easily out of its the way. The Destroyer was far less skilled than he would become, the impetus of necessity having once forced the Guardians to take on a level of skill they had not previously had. Loki held no fear of the Destroyer, and very little of Gamora.

After all, he had beaten them before when they had had surprise on their side. He was not going to lose when he knew exactly what would happen.

And so, to preserve the surprise that he had, the surprise of knowing what was going to happen, Loki fled. He projected an image of himself right over his body, then overlaid a cloaking spell, perfectly covering his body. The effect was, as he stepped away from his shade, that he appeared as though he was still standing there.

The knife went right through his throat.

Loki gurgled, partially surprised. Gamora’s grin was just as toothy and sharp as his must’ve been. “You’re not half as clever as you think you are, Loki. You did not think to mask the ripples.”

Still cloaked, Loki tipped his head so he could look down at the water. Ah. There were ripples without a source, the tiniest of currents in the water showing the outline of his legs. Clever.  Well then, it looked as though he was going to have to come out with some of his more obscure tricks.

The clouds of darkness burst out of his hands as he held them with the palms turned towards Gamora and Drax. The darkness filled the room almost too quickly for Loki to see the stunned look on Gamora’s face. But he did, and he grinned in true mirth.

Of course she wouldn’t expect that trick; he hadn’t learned it yet. It was something a friend would teach him in a few months, possibly a year or so. With all the time travelling it was hard to place events and tell how long it would be before he would actually learn it. At any rate, the fact of the matter was that Gamora couldn’t possibly know to expect it, because the past him wouldn’t have known it yet.

His own vision blocked by the complete darkness, Loki reached out with his magic. It wasn’t quite detailed enough to show him everything in the room, but it was enough to give him an idea. He had carefully stepped to the side the moment the darkness had arrived, so as not to be caught in the Destroyer’s wild charge.

It had proved to be a prudent action, and it gave Loki the few moments needed to pull the knife from his throat. It made a sickly sucking sound as it slowly came free from his flesh, but the wound alone would not enough to kill a frost giant. It hurt, there was no denying that, but it wouldn’t kill him.

He considered for a moment, then took a few more steps to his right, so close that he could wipe his knife on Gamora’s leathers. She started, but she didn’t flail around wildly like the Destroyer had. Gamora would only strike with complete precision, and she could not locate him in the darkness. Loki smiled again. He had no doubt that she understood the message: that he could have killed her, there in the darkness, and there was nothing she could have done to stop it.

He had chosen not to.

 

Quickly, he waded away. Well, that had gone nothing like it had the first time around. Loki’s step practically had a bounce in it, energised as he was by the unexpectedness of it all. Yes his throat hurt like he had gone several rounds with Thor, but he would survive. And the Guardians lived, and would be allies eventually. They might not like him, but that wouldn’t matter when the time came. There would be more pressing issues.

Loki hadn’t gone far before he finally emerged from the cloud of darkness, no more than a few hallways. He took another corner, then ducked back. Someone had been passing by, had nearly caught him. Given that he knew where both Skye and the Winter Soldier were, there was no doubt that it was one of the Guardians.

He poked his head back around the corner and bit back a grin. He knew that silhouette. Star-Lord was turning the corner, his back still to Loki. Oh, yes.

He slid silently around the corner.

 

Of all the beings in the galaxy that could be holding Peter at swordpoint, he would be hard-pressed to find one that scared him more than Loki. Except Thanos. And Ronan. Oh, and Nova, when she was angry.

Still, definitely top five.

Peter took that as a sign that he would need to use his most effective form of defence. Acting like an idiot.

“Hey, I know you. Man, you’re that guy, you know the one. Loki, that’s it. You’re the guy who attacked Terra,” Peter said, pasting on a look of complete idiocy. Loki had no way of knowing that it was Peter’s planet he had tried to invade, and that the whole is awestruck act was just that: an act.

The edge of the sword pressed even more closely against Peter’s throat. He only narrowly avoided swallowing. “Come now, Star-Lord. Do you really expect me to believe that you would congratulate me on the attempted invasion of your home planet?”

Oh, shit. Loki knew Peter’s codename. There was no way that that was a coincidence. “Look, man. You and I, we’ve got no beef.” At Loki’s confused look, Peter tried again. “I don’t have any problems with you, surely you can’t have any problems with me.”

Loki smiled. For the first time, Peter focused on him rather than on the sword to his throat, and finally noticed the Asgardian Prince’s own throat. There was a rather large hole in it, and a black viscous liquid seeping from it. Peter had to force back another swallow.

“Would not have a problem, Star-Lord, except that you are holding one of my compatriots against either of our wills. You should consider letting him go; our leader will not be pleased if she has to come after him.”

“She didn’t sound that scary,” Peter said, dubiously. She had sounded, well, nice. Of course, she had lied to him. He didn’t believe for a second that she and her team were adventurers who just happened upon a portal and space than thought it looked like fun. They were absolutely there for the Infinity Stone. That still didn’t make them scary.

“Yes. She doesn’t sound that scary,” Loki said mildly. Peter suppressed a shiver. The Asgardian wasn’t protesting, wasn’t trying to convince him of how dangerous his leader was. That, as much as the fact that Loki of all people was taking orders from someone other than Thanos, established just how dangerous she. Peter racked his brains for any idea who she might me.

The fact that he couldn’t think of anyone and that someone like that had managed to fly under the radar just made it worse.

“Look, I think there’s been a big misunderstanding,” Peter tried. He didn’t have much hope that it would work, but his experience was that it was almost always worth trying. If you didn’t try, you would never succeed. He had some distant, fuzzy memory of someone saying that to him once. A teacher? A relative? He couldn’t remember.

To be honest, most days, he didn’t really remember anything at all of his time before the Ravagers. It was just… the memory of a dream.

“Misunderstanding?” Loki said silkly. “I don’t believe so. You thought that you could threaten us and get away with that. Clearly you cannot.”

“Yeah, well if we had known who he was with, we would have been a little less heavy-handed with it,” Peter agreed, his mind working furiously as he tried to buy time.

There was absolutely no way that Peter could let Loki or the rest of the Trickster’s team get their hands on the Infinity Stone. He had been doing some research into the things – despite what Gamora said, he wasn’t a complete idiot – and he knew that the powers this one had might not be the same as the Orb. That didn’t matter though. It would be just as dangerous no matter what form that danger took.

“Tell me, Star-Lord, do you really expect to be able to talk your way out of this? Talk your way past Loki Silvertongue?”

Okay, Peter may have not thought that through as thoroughly as he should have. Still, he might be able to delay long enough for one of the others to wonder where he had gotten to. He didn’t hold up much hope though; the bunch of former criminals that he had fallen in with were not exactly the most nervous of people. They would probably figure that he had found something shiny to bring back and gotten distracted.

To be perfectly honest, Peter may have made the same assumption one or two times when Rocket and Drax had gone missing. And it had come to bite him back in the ass when they had cause the entire diplomatic incident on Spartax. So really, they should know better. They wouldn’t, but they should.

“No,” Peter said. “I’m just… getting out all the words that I was owed in an entire lifetime, since it looks like I’m probably not going to get a chance to use them. Surely you’re not going to begrudge a dying man a chance that one last conversation?”

Loki laughed. “You’re not dying. I’m not going to kill you.”

Peter scoffed. It probably wouldn’t help his case, but he felt the need to demonstrate that he wasn’t an idiot. Loki’s team was clearly after the Infinity Stone too, and Thanos had to know that they were the ones responsible for keeping the Orb from him. Literally the best outcome for Peter was in Loki kill him them and there, rather than taking him to Thanos.

That really wasn’t a thought that Peter wanted to have. It didn’t make it any less true.

“Why would I kill you?” Loki asked. “After all, your continued existence is of no concern to me.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that Thanos doesn’t want revenge for us stopping him from getting the Infinity Stone and destroying the Nova Empire?” Peter asked.

Loki’s smile widened. If it got much bigger, it was likely to develop a mind of its own and walk right off his face. “I’m sure Thanos does. Luckily for you, he did not think to give us any orders to bring you in. Besides, we have another priority. So long as you do as our leader asks, there is no reason why you should not be allowed to live at the end of all this.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.”

Loki sighed. “Well, if you’re so determined to believe that you are to be harmed, then–”

Loki leaned in, putting some more of his weight into the sword. It pressed hard against Peter’s throat, and he felt the skin break. It stung. Even more terrifying, all pretence at civility dropped from Loki’s face.

“Tell me where your raccoon is holding my teammate, or I will make you wish I had turned you over to Thanos.”

Peter believed him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schedule of remaining chapters:  
> \- chapter 3: 11th of October 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 4: 18th of October 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 5: 25th of October 2015  
> \- chapter 6: 1st of November 2015  
> \- chapter 7: 8th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 8: 15th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 9: 22nd of November 2015  
> \- chapter 10: 29th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 11: 6th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 12: 13th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 13: 20th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 14: 27th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 15: 3rd of January 2016  
> \- chapter 16: 10th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 17: 17th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 18: 24th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 19: 31st of January 2016  
> \- chapter 20: 7th of February 2016  
> \- epilogue: 14th of February 2016


	4. You Can't Take Me, I'm Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Guardians get their asses kicked, Loki is exasperated and Ward is - as ever - a dick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so life kind of got in the way and then it had suddenly been three weeks and I am ridiculously behind. Hopefully things should settle down from now on and I will try to catch up on the chapters I've missed so that the last chapter of the fic will still go up on the day I originally scheduled it.

When Skye had been young, her Dad had set up a projector to show Planet of the Apes on one of his workroom walls.

It wasn’t the only movie he had used to keep her quiet, but it was the one that came to Skye’s mind as she abruptly stopped swimming. She felt like she was going to throw up. Someone had to be playing some sick trick on her. There was no way it was real.

The sound of the Winter Soldier sucking in a breath came over the coms. At least, that was what Skye thought it was. The sound quality was so bad that it sounded like he was eating chips. Kind of a mood ruiner. Not that Skye had a particular good mood at that particular moment though. Ward was missing, and then she had gone and seen that.

It wasn’t anything as cliched as the face of the Statue of Liberty, but it was just as powerful. There, in the slimy ruins that housed one of the Infinity Stones, Skye had seen a disused playground, one of the few things not completely covered by seaweed and slime. And she had known…

It was Earth. The ruins she was in, it was somewhere on Earth.

At least, that was what the Infinity Stone wanted her to think…

The panic hit. No, it couldn’t be, they couldn’t– Actually, it wasn’t. Strange things had been happening, people had been developing powers. Skye, herself, could do things that only a few years before would have seemed impossible.

But nothing she had seen led Skye to believe that it all could change so quickly. It had been a matter of a few weeks since she had last been on  her home planet. That amount of plant life wouldn’t have grown so fast even if there had been some cataclysmic event to sink a city, the best case senario.

There was no need to panic. She hadn’t sacrificed herself for no reason. There was something else afoot, and she had a pretty good idea exactly what object to be blamed. She had no doubt that they weren’t actually on Earth. The playground, with its peeling paint and unnecessary coddling by way of rubber flooring, was modern. It was something that she could expect to see in the present. She didn’t care what the most alarmist of climate scientists said, there was no way the water would rise that far before tastes changed.

Oh, it was scary. Her world in ruins. It was what she had feared so much that she had sacrificed everything she had, down even to the principles of not working for an evil intergalactic warlord. Yes, it was everything she feared and Skye was beginning to really hate the Infinity Stones. That feeling only increased as she figured out what the power of the Stone they were looking for was.

To reach into people’s minds and make real what they feared the most.

“You been told about the Infinity Stones?” Skye asked the Winter Soldier. They hadn’t talked about it much, referring to them simply as the Stones. She didn’t actually know if he was aware of the power that those things had.

“Gathered they were dangerous,” he replied. “Figured I’d just let you lot deal with it.”

Skye couldn’t help the snort. There was something about the Winter Soldier’s increasing lack of care about what they were up to that she liked. His rigid stance was slackening, his face becoming slightly more mobile. Skye expected him to crack a joke any day.

She still didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, sans powers.

Ever since she had stepped through the portal and into the wider universe, Skye had felt her world spinning out of control. Back on Earth, she had at least felt as though she could back out and go back to SHIELD if she really needed to. More than that, it had been her call to make. In space, she had several of the most dangerous people she had ever met taking her orders, but she was acutely aware that Thanos was the one calling the shots.

There was nothing that she could do about that. Thanos was not, in fact, a problem. He was still the solution, as much as she itched and chafed like she was a rebellious teenager all over again. There was nothing she would do about that. There was no sense of control to be found there.

She needed to focus on the Infinity Stone. She might not be keen to deliver it to Thanos, but it was the only way she could think of to regain some sense of control amongst the underwater ruins of what appeared to be Earth, one of her people captured. Thanos wasn’t her target, no matter what the SHIELD agent in her wanted.

The group that had gotten between her and the Infinity Stone, however… they were fair game. They were fair game and she knew a fact that they didn’t: whether the Infinity Stone was presenting a copy of something Skye feared or not, they were in something like Earth. Earth rules applied.

What aliens would know how Earth worked at all, never mind enough to use it to their advantage they way Skye was planning to?

 

On a pissed off scale from one to ten, Grant was currently sitting at around thirteen. He could imagine just how dirty the look he was giving the talking raccoon was but he couldn’t find the motivation to stop. The critter had held him at gunpoint and tied him up so that his boss could threaten Skye. Grant was not okay with that.

Not. At. All.

No one got to threaten Skye. She might still not like him after the HYDRA fiasco, she might even have shot him, but she was still one of Grant’s top priorities. No matter what she might think and no matter whether she trusted him or not, Grant still cared for Skye. He might not be able to call it love – he didn’t know it was even capable of feeling it, never mind recognising it – but Skye was important to him. End of story.

But Grant wasn’t such a fool that he would try to convince himself that she was the only reason he was there. He could feel it, scratching around at the back of his mind. The old compulsion, the old bond. The moment he had heard of the Infinity Stones, he had known exactly what was being talked about. And he wanted it, thirsted for it in a way he had never thirsted for anything before. Not revenge, not Garrett’s approval, not even Skye.

He wanted the Infinity Stone.

It wasn’t rational. It was a terrible idea. He didn’t even have any particular use for it. But he wanted it, couldn’t help but want to. It was madness and he knew that. But knowing what a bad idea it was didn’t stop the problem. All the knowledge did was make him twist and turn, trying to pull not only at the physical bindings the racoon had put on him but also the mental ones, at the lust for the powerful stone.

Both were just as ineffective as each other. He could no more wiggle free from his bonds that he could shake that strong desire to get the Infinity Stone. He needed– no, he didn’t need anything. It was a bad idea. Thinking of it in any other terms would just feed the madness. Anything, any small thing, might be progress against whatever was holding him.

But the compulsion was strong enough that Grant was genuinely racking his brains, trying to remember if he had ever been exposed to the Mind Stone. Except it didn’t feel anything like what the debriefings from Agent Barton had said it felt like. There was no sense of peace, certainly no sense of clarity. It was just an urge, and urge he simply couldn’t shake.

It frightened him as very few things did.

A low hum sounded near his ear. Grant froze. It was amazing that he was on the other side of the galaxy, and still space guns looked so very much like how sci-fi movies imagined. Sounded like it to. Not that Grant was a particular fan or cared about them at all, but once upon a time Skye had forced him to watch what felt like every D-grade sci-fi movie in existence.

He ignored the slight twinge, knew that it was entirely his fault what had happened between him and Skye. Instead, he spoke to his captor. “You know, that would be a lot more threatening if I thought you’d actually use it.”

The reacoon sneered. Grant tried not to be impressed at how humanoid the raccoons features were. “You think I won’t use this? Go on than. Try something.”

Grant wasn’t an idiot. He might have his pride, but he also knew when he was being baited. Maybe he would try something, but he certainly wouldn’t do it straight after being invited. That was a recipe for disaster. Besides, surprise was never something to be underestimated, or to be given up lightly.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, humie,” the raccoons sneered.

But at least it lowered the blaster – dear God, never let Skye never hear him refer to it is that, he’d never hear the end of it – and trundled away a few meters. It flipped open the gun, and produced a tool from seemingly nowhere and began tinkering with it.

Fantastic. A raccoon that made guns.

It was definitely a strange universe. But that was about as enthusiastic as Grant could get. He had never really dreamed of far-flung galaxies and strange wonders. As a child, he had been too preoccupied by what his parents and his older brother were doing. When he dreamed, he dreamed of fire and nothingness. He supposed that there wasn’t really any way he was ever going to turn out good after that.

Those were not the dreams of a well-adjusted kid.

He snapped himself out of the past. He could think about that later; there would be time enough once they were stuck on a spaceship for however long it would take to get back to a habited planet. Besides, there was no one in the team who would willingly talk to him. He might as well have something to do to keep him occupied throughout the journey.

Damnit. Whatever the substance was that made up the ties that held Grant’s wrists together behind his back, it was stronger than anything he could break naturally. He had no idea whether friction would make any difference either, and he didn’t want to waste his time in case it didn’t. That left really only one option.

Keeping a careful eye on the raccoon who was still tinkering with his oversized gun, just to make sure that he really was paying Grant no mind, he slowly eased his arm into an awkward position. Deliberately. There was a slight strain along the line of his arm as his bound wrists inched ever further up his back. For a moment, his whole arm strained.

Crack! Grand hadn’t been entirely sure where the break would happen, only that it would. But it had been the socket of his shoulders that had gone before his arms, the ridged that would normally hold the ball of his arm in more fragile than the solid bone and muscle of his arms.

In a flash, he had twisted his right arm beyond what would be possible otherwise. From the different angle, he easily slipped that wrist out of his binding, then use the extra slack to pop the other one out too.

He wrenched first one, then the other shoulder forward. Against all odds and previous experience, they weren’t broken. He had thought they were, and Grant was more than a little bit surprised to find that they are only dislocated. They shouldn’t have been, but he wasn’t going to complain about his good fortune.

It meant that he would be more effective when it came to finding the Infinity Stone.

He glanced at the raccoon again. It was still completely immersed in tinkering with its gun. Grant held back a sneer. It had terrible situational awareness; didn’t it know to never turn its back on a prisoner? Still, Grant knew better than to complain too much about the stupidity of an enemy when it worked in his favour.

“Do not attempt to leave,” a cold, female voice said. Grant froze, turning slightly to see a green woman previously hidden behind a doorjam. Her face was hard. “As long as you are alive, you are leverage against Loki and the rest of your companions. But alive does not mean not harmed.”

Grant pasted on a charming smile, the very same one which had fooled so much of SHIELD into thinking that he had a heart of gold under his cold exterior. Or even a heart at all.

“Surely we can come to some sort of agreement–”

“I will make no deals with the Trickster’s ally,” the green woman cut in. She looked away from him, towards the raccoon’s back “I do not care how much you wish for target practice, he is no use to is dead.”

The raccoon swivelled around on its stool. “Jeez, way to ruin my fun,” it complained. Grant suppressed a shiver. He hadn’t seen what that gun could do, but the ominous hum it generated suggested that it would not be pleasant.

Well, it looked like Grant would have to try something else. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy; he should have known better. He looked around at the Spartan and more than slightly damp room that the raccoon’s team seem to be using as a base, hoping to find inspiration for a way out.

The walls of the underground structure shuddered for a second, then the shockwave hit. Grant’s thoughts were knocked right out of him for a few seconds, then he blinked and shook his head, trying to make sense of what was going on.

It took a few seconds for him to decided what the feeling had reminded him of. It was the sensation he had experienced a thousand times before. It felt as though someone had let off an explosive, one strong enough to shake the very foundations of the building that was still retaining air, shaking it despite the weight of the water above.

Grant really hoped that anyone stupid enough to risk blowing a hole in the wall wasn’t on his side. He might still be wearing his spacesuit, complete with oxygen filter, but it was a lot harder to manoeuvre in water. He was also beginning to think that it was a severely underrated part of the SHIELD curriculum.

His thoughts recovered, Grant didn’t bother to see if the raccoon was still paying attention. He took his chances, diving away from where he was originally located. It didn’t matter where he was going to, all that mattered was that he was no longer where he started. Whenever there was a gunfight, it paid to not be where people thought you were. Particularly when a prisoner, because the last thing he wanted was for the raccoon and its band to think that he might be a liability.

It was a bit of a stretch, it was true. Of course, he had learned a lot of things but they had no way of knowing just how extensive his training was. If he was anyone else they would probably be paranoid for thinking that. Instead, that just made them appropriately cautious.

They didn’t need to know that.

Grant rolled a second before his dive would have taken him face first into the floor. He still hit the ground with a slightly painful thump but, by turning his momentum from downwards to forwards, he dispersed a lot of the energy. With less force behind the fall, Grant managed to recover fairly quickly and roll smoothly into a crouch. He was sure that it was very impressive to see, except that there was no one to see it. That didn’t annoy him. Really.

Pushing up into a standing position from his crouch, Grant spun. At the corner of his eye, he saw a jagged piece of half broken metal sticking out from the rusted walls. Perfect. In a flash, he had his bindings hooked over the top, his wrists nothing but dead weight on either side. It didn’t snap immediately, but then he never thought that it would. Instead, he began to rub it furiously, praying that it wasn’t some strange alien material impervious to friction.

He was in luck. In a matter of seconds, the bindings were frayed enough that he pushed down sharply, the sudden change in force enough to snap the half of the cord that remained on frayed. His hands dropped to his sides. Either side.

Grant grinned.

They had no idea what was about to come. Grant was not in a good mood, and he did not appreciate being used as a weapon. Especially as a weapon against Skye. Looking around, he saw that the raccoon was still going for its gun, time seeming to have slowed right down for Grant. The green woman, however, was coming at him fast, a blade swinging towards him.

Grant barely had the chance to wonder about how an alien could have a sword that looks so very much like something that could have come from Earth, before he was diving, his body knowing exactly what needed to be done to survive. He grimaced, the few centimetres of water splashing into his eyes. He had somehow managed to keep them shut when he had done his roll before, meaning that while he was completely wet he hadn’t gotten the filthy liquid into his eyes.

That time he failed, leaving him trying to blink the grit out of one of the most vulnerable places on his body as he scrabbled to his feet. His dive had allowed him to narrow avoid the sword, the green woman overshooting slightly, but that didn’t leave Grant in a much better position than when he had started. He was still weaponless, still outnumbered.

On the other hand, he was Grant motherfucking Ward. And he knew where in the room he could find a weapon.

The raccoon spun half second before Grant reached him, grasping the gun. It was too late. Grant was on the critter before he had fully swung the overly large and heavy weapon off the table, a testament as to why oversize weapons may look cooler in movies, but were stupidly impractical and an actual fight. Grant grabbed the top of the gun, keeping it pointed away from him, as his other hand swung around to grasp the raccoon by the scruff of its neck. He lifted it off the ground.

The critter hissed and spat and swore at him, but it didn’t matter. Grant had pulled the gun out of its hand with more ease than he would have thought, even given the creatures small and thin fingers. Once it was in his normal sized hand, the gun didn’t look quite so comically huge as it had on the raccoon’s, but it still had a decent have to it.

Oh, yeeeeah.

Grant continued his spin, finishing so that he was facing the green skinned woman with the raccoon between them and the gun squarely pointed at her. The woman froze. Except that wasn’t a fair description of what she did. No, she stilled. It was the difference of a professional versus an amateur. That was not shock; that was caution. She knew well how much of a tactical advantage Grant’s actions could prove to be, as long as he knew what he was doing.

Just as Grant knew that, if she knew what she was doing, she could well counter them. That was the problem with facing off against a professional. There was none of the frustration at the stupidity of an amateur, but it also meant that there were several degrees of recursion. You know that I know that you know, and all that.

“Put him down,” the woman said. Her tone was steely, even though she must know that she was in a far worse bargaining position than he was. Her eyes were hard. Clearly, they won’t just on the same team. They were friends.

“No.” Grant let a grin slip onto his face. It was completely unlike what he would have done if he was still at SHIELD, and it felt far more natural than anything he had done in all those months.

“If you hurt him–” she began to threaten.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t feel particularly inclined to be generous,” Grant cut off her threat. “After all, you guys are the ones who were using me to threaten my teammates not twenty minutes ago. Of course I’m not feeling particularly inclined to show mercy.”

The green skinned woman flushed. For a moment, Grant thought that she was blushing. Then it hit him that her biology might well mean that it was the equivalent to a human paling. “Then we are at an impasse.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I would say that I am holding all the cards.” The alien looked puzzled. Grant suppressed as sigh. Not only would it be a waste of time, it also made him feel a little bit too much like Skye. He cared for her, but I didn’t mean he wanted to be her. “I have the much stronger negotiating advantage.”

The green woman’s lips pursed. She clearly wasn’t happy, and Grant presumed that strong-arming people was just as bad in her culture as it was to his. Too bad. Their side started it, and Grant was very much enjoying the moral high ground. It was a much better strategic location.

“What will it take for you to release my… companion?”

Grant pretended to think about it. He jerked his chin towards the door. “You let me go.”

The green woman didn’t even need to think about it. “Done.”

The raccoon that was still hissing and spitting and swearing in Grant’s grasp took a moment to turn to his companion. “Don’t go promising anything like that, Gamora. The moment I’m free I’m going to remove what passes for this guy’s spine.”

Grant raised an eyebrow, impressed by the raccoon’s violent tendencies. “Yes. You can beat me in a fight. Which is why you just did.” Even as the raccoon continued to swear and bite, probably giving him rabies, Grant began to walk towards the door. The green woman – Gamora – looked as though she had eaten something particularly unpleasant but she didn’t try to stop them. Instead, she stepped back, just one single step further away from the door.

The moment Grant was in striking distance, he let his grin turn nasty. With a single swipe, he slammed the raccoon’s head against the doorframe, not hard enough to kill it but hard enough that it was instantly knocked unconscious. Gamora let out a cry of fury, but Grant was already dropping the vermin to the ground and turning to go through the door.

The woman seemed to care for the rodent, God knows why. He had no doubt that she would be to occupied making sure that it was all right to follow him.

Grant was always prepared to go the extra mile to make sure he came out ahead.

 

A headache beginning to pound in his temples, Loki snarled at Star–Lord. Dear God, he had forgotten just how annoying the man used to be. It was a small comfort to know that he would improve eventually, but that eventually had never seemed so very far away. It stunned him to think that this man had been removed from his planet of origin, against his will and probably violently, and had been raised by the Ravages of all beings.

Despite that, the most substantial thought in the man’s rather empty had was how to get in the metaphorical pants of whatever being of female appearance he encountered.

It was a wonder that the Midguardians had managed to survive until then.

“Look, man. I know you’re an important guy. Surely you have much more important things to do than to keep little old me prisoner.”

Loki snapped. He slammed to a halt, grabbing the shoulder of the man he had walking in front of him and pivoting his prisoner to look him in the eye. “Stop. Talking.”

“Don’t they call you Silvertongue? With such eloquence, I can see why,” an unwelcome voice sounded from a passage over to Loki’s right. Wonderful. Ward and Star-Lord in the same vicinity. Loki had offended a higher power recently, and it showed.

He acknowledged the other man’s presence. “Ward.”  But the Midguardian had attention only for Star–Lord. Of course. With how long it had been since these events had happened the first time for Loki, he had forgotten so much. He had forgotten how much these two had instinctively hated each other.

“Hey there,” Ward said with what was  very clearly false cheer. It was bordering on deranged. “Fancy seeing you here, Star-Lord. Say, did I get around to thanking you for holding me hostage? No?”

Star-Lord may have tried to weasel his way out of the situation with Loki, but he clearly had enough self-preservation to stay silent in the face of Ward’s clear anger. Loki credited the Ravagers.

“Do not blame the thief because you are not able to protect yourself,” Loki said to draw Ward’s ire towards him. It was not strictly necessary, and would create rifts. But then Ward’s was not a friendship that Loki was afraid of losing. He had never had it to start with, nor had he ever wanted it. Grant Ward could well be a dangerous man in a fight, but Loki disliked him enough that he would willing to take the risk that came from being Ward’s enemy.

As expected, Ward shot him a nasty look. Loki refrained from saying anything more, though he was sorely tempted to rub it in. It would mean far more pain further down the track but Loki couldn’t bring himself to care. It was but a small matter in the much larger scheme of things. The old him would have done so.

He liked to think that he had become better than that.

But, just as Ward was opening his mouth to reply, another explosion rocked the structure. Loki nearly lost his footing, needing to reach out to brace himself on the disgusting and slime coated walls. If it hadn’t been such an instinctive reaction, he would have grimaced.

At the very least, he was not the only one to suffer the indignity. Ward, too, braced himself on the nearest a solid thing, and Star-Lord did not have the free hands to do so and ended up face down in the grimy water.

If only their roles had been reversed. Loki should have liked to see Ward subjected to the indignity. Who said that karma must be chronological?

Before either of them could straighten themselves and continue where their argument had left off, Loki felt a low rumble begin at the base of his spine. Of course, it wasn’t originating there, but that seemed to be where he felt the sensation first. It had always been so, for no apparent reason than either he or Skye could discern. But there was no mistaking the feeling of Skye using her powers. Ward did not miss that either, if the widening of his eyes was any indication.

Loki caught the Midguardian’s eye, a silent understanding passing between them. They did not like each other, and neither were prepared to hide the fact. But they were technically on the same team, and so they had to work together. But beyond any technicalities, they both cared about Skye’s safety, even if Ward and Skye were understandably suspicious of Loki’s motives.

Skye appeared to be fighting whoever was the source of the explosions. And Skye’s safety was one of the few subjects on which Loki and Ward were in perfect agreement.

Leaving Star-Lord defend for himself, they both broke into a run.

May that gods have mercy on whomever had thought it was a good idea to attack Skye Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schedule of remaining chapters:  
> \- chapter 4: 18th of October 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 5: 25th of October 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 6: 1st of November 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 7: 8th of November 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 8: 15th of November 2015 (late)  
> \- chapter 9: 22nd of November 2015  
> \- chapter 10: 29th of November 2015  
> \- chapter 11: 6th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 12: 13th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 13: 20th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 14: 27th of December 2015  
> \- chapter 15: 3rd of January 2016  
> \- chapter 16: 10th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 17: 17th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 18: 24th of January 2016  
> \- chapter 19: 31st of January 2016  
> \- chapter 20: 7th of February 2016  
> \- epilogue: 14th of February 2016


	5. The Darkness Will Rise From The Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Skye is insecure, nightmares come to life and the Infinity Stone is hella creepy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive!  
> Yes, its been ages. For various personal resons, I simply didn't have time to write for a while and then I was having trouble getting back into the groove. If this chapter feels a bit choppier than normal, its because it was written off and on over the space of a month and a half rather than the week the others were.  
> I was also being inspired by a bunch of other stories that now exist as fragments on my hard drive to be worked on when I need to get the creative juices flowing. I'm not actively working on them - this is my priority - but I'll post them as they finish. None of them relate to this series, but there is a Skye/Falcon soulmate fic that I'm particularly proud of.  
> But back to this fic. Yes, I'm back to posting every Sunday, and part of the reason that I held off posting this chapter was waiting until I was back in the habit of writing enough to be confident that I would be able to keep to that schedule.  
> Well, that's enough from me. On with the show!

Skye knew that she had delayed as much as possible. She had relied on her memory and on common sense for as long as she could; she needed to use the power that had made her so useful to Thanos.

She stopped the Winter Soldier with a single raised hand. For a moment, he looked puzzled. Yes, even in the derelict and disused tunnels, he was becoming increasingly emotive. Someday, he may even be a real boy. She didn’t explain herself to him, taking her cue from May rather than AC. She simply wasn’t cool enough to be AC.

She closed her eyes, pulling in a deep breath to steady herself. She could feel her nerves skittering along her spine but her power wasn’t rearing its head anymore. Skye wished that she knew why, what had made it settled down so that she could replicate the results, but she didn’t have a clue. All she knew was that it was properly contained but still at her beck and call.

She let a tiny sliver out, but no more. It was enough; the frequency mattered more than the strength. Over the previous few weeks, she had gone before Thanos each and every day. She had forced her power through first the Mind Stone and then the Tesseract. Neither ever left Thanos’ sight. He had learned that lesson from the first failed invasion of Earth.

She didn’t hit the right frequency immediately but then she never expected that she would. After her final run in Sokovia, she no longer reacted to the Infinity Stones the way she used to. They had had to carve the Mind Stone out of her left hand, her skin having melted around it. It hadn’t hurt, neither the burning in or the cutting out, but then she hadn’t felt anything in her hand since.

Nothing except the same reverberation that helped her locate the Infinity Stones.

She slid slowly through the frequencies, like a singer warming up through the scales. She got some things back but she could tell they weren’t what she was looking for. She couldn’t explain it but the Infinity Stones resonated with something inside her. The other frequencies never made that part of her, her power, vibrate in the same way.

Her heart shuddered. There. That was the right frequency. A tiny moment, a fraction of a second later, and she felt the tiny reflected shockwave return. The feeling was small but enough to make her heart wobble. It felt like her heart was fluttering, like she was in the first brush of love. It was a pleasant feeling and it terrified her.

Weapons of mass destruction should not feel like that. Skye had waited as long as she could to search for the Stones in that way, took as long as possible before she had to feel that way about them again. It was very much on her list of concerns, right up there with the fact that she was working for a galactic warlord. She was more than a little scared that, now that she had made the big compromise, it was only a matter of time before… Well, before she was as much of a bad guy as the people she was working with.

She shoved that train of thought aside mercilessly. She had learned that from Coulson, the pragmatic compartmentalisation when there was a mission to complete. It wasn’t the focus born of madness - or vice versa - that her dad had. Skye had never been like him, not in that way. Even at the height of her coding binges, she was never as self-destructive as that. She was never so immersed in something that her own well-being wouldn’t worm its way back in eventually. No matter what she did, she would never risk killing herself the way her Dad did.

The sharp ring of boots on concrete sounded behind her, alongside another set of steps muffled by water. Not much water, but water nonetheless. Skye stiffened but the steps were far enough away that she knew she wasn’t in immediate danger. But they were coming closer and her reprieve wouldn’t last long. She had to act.

Automatically, she braced her hand on a piece of fallen concrete, the better to swing herself down under it. Given her size, she easily fit in the dark and wet gap that was down there. Skye took a moment to check her heart rate, something that she hadn’t done in a very long time. It wasn’t that she was scared, it was that she had no idea what was coming around the corner, or how they perceived the world around them.

The universe was full of strange and wonderful things. Skye didn’t intend to die because of it.

It took effort, actual concentration, but Skye slowly pushed away the sensation of the fetid and slimy water sticking her clothes to her skin. Don’t get her wrong, she wasn’t some spoiled princess. She had grown up with money, all the money her Dad had thrown at her rather than put his not inconsiderable resources towards learning how to be an actual good parent, but that didn’t mean that she had spent her entire life protected.

If nothing else, her uncle Rhodney wouldn’t have stood for it. And he hadn’t, taking her out on camping trips to the wilds of America, or at least as wild as the country could get. Because Rhodney was a sensible human being, one with a working grasp of what was and wasn’t appropriate for a child, he hadn’t trained her. He had just made sure that Skye could take care of herself if she didn’t have money or other people around to do it for her.

Sometimes, that meant a week out in the back country of Florida with no electronic devices whatsoever. And not the nice parts either; uncle Rhodney would always find the area with the most mosquitoes, the least amount of alligators and the most partially submerged walking tracks. Yet it always made Skye appreciate that he loved her.

Never mind her dad, it was her uncle Rhodney who she wouldn’t want as an enemy.

Skye waited. Distantly, she could feel her nerves scratching at the back of her mind but she pushed it away. It was part May’s training, part necessity. It wasn’t like when she first got her powers, she wasn’t pushing it inside. Just… somewhere else.

She continued breathing, even that necessary human function slowing and deepening until Skye almost didn’t feel awake, almost didn’t feel alive. She felt as though she was quite literally part of her surroundings, as though she didn’t even exist in her own right. It was an illusion, but it went a long way towards reassuring her that she would be fine if whoever was coming looked where she was hiding. She felt as though they wouldn’t even find her then.

All of a sudden, there were boots passing her field of vision, that thin strip of the destroyed corridor that she could see from where she was lying. She wondered idly if it was the arsehole who was holding Ward hostage. Now that she was- not thinking about it exactly but letting her mind wander naturally, she realised that the kidnapper had sounded far more human than any of the aliens she had encountered in her a few weeks at Thanos’s stronghold.

Her heart seized, fear stretching its tendrils into even her completely restive mind. Never mind the immediate threat of the people walking past – humanoid, at least, with footwear that looked more like boots than Skye would have expected given the wide possibility of garments that could exist in an infinite universe. Thanos was what scared her despite it all.

What the hell was she doing?

The boots had passed, both pairs, and the echoes of the steps of whomever had passed her were fading fast. Skye herself was still shoved under the debris, wet and disgusting. Something inside her tensed. What the hell was she doing? Well, obviously she was hiding from whomever was going past, that much was obvious. But why was she doing it?

Skye was dangerous. She had the training of a SHIELD agent, even if she didn’t know how that stacked up against a wider universe. She had powers strong enough to scare even that alien, the one from species that had caused Skye to have those powers in the first place. The Kree. But above all that, Skye was dangerous enough for Thanos to leave her in command of her own little Infinity Stone retrieval unit.

The reason he had Loki play her so that Skye was forced to join Thanos was that her powers could be used to track down the Infinity Stones. Skye got that. But a few weeks had been enough to tell her that Thanos would never have let her go after an Infinity Stone with only Ward, Loki and the Winter Soldier as backup unless he thought that she could do it.

Thanos may have underestimated humans – and the Nova Empire if some of the rumours that Skye had heard were to be believed – but he was no amateur. Two lapses of judgement didn’t make that judgement any less insightful.

Something warm and nasty wrapped itself around Skye’s stomach as she continued to lay there under the debris.She was better than this. Once, that might have just been self belief talking but now she had the objective assessment of Thanos to back it up. Whatever else he may be, Thanos was not someone who pandered to other people’s feelings. If he hadn’t thought she was capable of dealing with it, Skye would have found herself locked up, or stranded on some deserted meteor.

The point being that she knew she was better at hiding from some random opponent, that one of the most dangerous beings in the galaxy deemed her better than hiding from some random opponent.

So why was she still hiding under there?

Skye was better than this. She didn’t need a psychologist to tell her that she had issues. She had a boatload of issues, some inherited and some a special cocktail all of her own. She had issues with money, she had issues with family, she had issues with SHIELD and she had issues with self-esteem. There were so many things she had issues with. And she knew she was being ridiculous, that she didn’t need to hide. But that didn’t make it any easier.

Slowly, she belly-crawled out of her hiding place. The beings to whom the footsteps belonged were long gone, and Skye wasn’t scared. She just wished that she could attribute the not being scared to her bravery rather than to the absence of anyone who could be a threat.

She was going to be better than this.

Her hand drifted slowly towards the holstered gun at her hip. It wasn’t a human gun; it didn’t require bullets. It shot frigging lasers, and someday Skye might even be able to distance herself enough from the situation to fangirl over how cool that was. Maybe. In the meantime, she had something to prove to herself.

She unholstered it. It was stupid to leave a weapon unholstered any more than necessary, May had always said. It kept your hands busy, and made it obvious that you were a threat. Skye didn’t care. After all, she didn’t need her hands to use her powers. They just helped direct them.

It was only as she began walking, stalking the two beings who had gone past, that she realised that there was a throbbing buried deep in her head. She lifted one hand to massage her temple. But it was moving forward that did her more good than anything else, the pressure easing the closer Skye got to the Infinity Stone.

Oh, wonderful. Something else to know about her ever-changing powers. When she went looking for an Infinity Stone, she better find it or else she was going to have one hell of a headache. She deliberately tried not to think about how long that headache might last if she never went looking for the Stone. Would it last forever? Would it fade in time? It wasn’t like it was a normal headache. It might well last forever.

To take her mind off such unhelpful thoughts, Skye began to focus on her breathing again. In, out. In, out. In, out, in time to her light footfalls. She tried to avoid the water where possible, balancing almost delicately on small pieces of debris that were sticking out of the few inches of water that generally covered the floor.

With her smallish feet, Skye could stay above the water much more easily the most people would be able to, though sometimes it took a small jump to get from one to the other. Even with that minor acrobatics, Skye knew that she was still much quieter than most people. With so little weight, and such self-assurance, she was moving almost soundlessly towards the Infinity Stone, still moving in the same direction as the footsteps.

She could hear them again, the footsteps. They were ahead of her and getting increasingly close. Whoever was was walking slower, more casually. Skye’s experienced told her that they sounded most like guards on the end of a patrol. Having got through most of their rounds without any trouble, they were relaxing towards the end. Good. That worked in her favour.

Skye continues to increase her speed, beginning to sacrifice the tiniest bit of quietness in order to begin to build up momentum. She hopped from bit of debris to to bit of debris with a gracefulness that would have surprised had dad, Pepper or even Uncle Rhodney if they had seen her.

As a kid, she had always been elbow deep in whatever her dad’s latest experiment was, even if she had no idea what was going on. Then she had moved into computers, but she had never been much of a physical person, at least not before she had joined SHIELD.

But then no one could stay the same forever.

Skye slowed as she approached a corner. It wasn’t because of the corner, it was because she could hear that the footsteps were mere seconds away. If she went around the corner at speed, she would blow right into whoever it was. So she slowed, then came almost to a complete stop. She took a deep breath, focusing herself.

Now that she was so very close, she could hear them talking. To her ears, they sounded humanoid and the language they were speaking sounded like English but who knew with the translator implant. They could be anything. Well, given the fact that they wore humanoid style boots, Skye could at least be pretty sure that they weren’t tentacle monsters.

And her mind had just gone to a place it really didn’t need to. She shook her head, then winced at her stupidity. Maybe whatever process her brain underwent when she used her powers to find the frequency of the Infinity Stones scrambled her brains a little. That would explain why Skye was feeling as stupid and as slow as she was; it was the fault of her powers.

All right, enough. No more stalling. She was a badass; people kept acknowledging that. It was time that Skye did too. Whoever or whatever was just around the corner was about to as well. It was going to be a learning experience all round, even if some of that learning experience was what Skye was really capable of when she put her mind to it.

She closed her eyes, trying to force away the pain. Even though she knew the cause of her headache and it was lessening slightly as she got closer to the Infinity Stone, she was also aware of how much it might put her in danger if she was distracted. But she could push away pain, that had been yet another of the essential skills May had taught her. Some days, Skye couldn’t help but think that everything of use that she knew she had learned from Melinda May. And that wasn’t a bad thing at all.

Skye’s eyes snapped open.

She spun around the corner, her laser gun coming up faster than the human eye could see. She abandoned her quiet steps, not needing them anymore. Surprise was good, but Skye had no way of knowing which way the aliens were facing. She wasn’t going to go slow and risk getting caught by enemy fire. No, she was going to go full speed and stealth be damned.

Skye barely had a moment to process the fact that the two strangers appeared completely humanoid, at least to the brief assessment that Skye spared them. But even that was focused less on what they were and far more on where they were. It meant Skye had blasted one through the chest before he even had time to turn around.

A part of her - the part of her she owed to Pepper and Rhodney and Coulson - squawked in outrage. But it was a surprisingly small part of her. The rest simply settled itself, her mind centering in satisfaction at the excellent shot. She couldn’t have made a shot like that even a year ago, never mind two years before, when she was still a poor little rich girl turned hacker.

Of course, given how little time she had spent being an agent, eventually she was bound to make an amateur mistake, the kind that more seasoned agents had already made in their years rather than months under their SO. That was why, in her haste to prove something to herself, Skye’s pride had caused her to make the simplest of mistakes.

She had assumed that there was only two of them.

Well, that wasn’t strictly speaking true. It wasn’t that she had made on the assumptions, it was that she simply hadn’t thought about it at all. She had only heard two, and she had simply assumed that there were less of the people who had abducted Ward than she had assumed. But, as she lowered her gun, it occurred to Skye that there had to be more because Ward was nowhere around.

She almost didn’t hear the slight crunch of a boot on gravel behind her. Almost. As it was, she barely managed to dive for the ground, the laser avoiding her heart by less than half a meter, the bolt of energy slamming into her shoulder. Skye bit back a cry, not wanting to draw any more attention than she already had since she seemed to have made a mistake. That was how she justified it to herself, but the decision was instinctual. Skye was biting her lip before she had a chance to think about it.

Despite the pain, she ducked and rolled with surprising ease. She stumbled a bit coming to her feet but that was only to be expected given the amount of water and rubble around. Of course she couldn’t keep her feet. She wasn’t perfect. But that didn’t mean that she was helpless at the very first setback.

It was nothing more than a quick stumble, but it took Skye’s attention away from the stabbing pain in her head that was her proximity to the Infinity Stone gnawing at her mind. For a brief, blessed moment, she no longer felt the pull of the Stone. And that absence, the awareness of exactly how strong the impulse was scared her far more than the pain in her shoulder from being hit by a laser, maybe even more than Thanos.

As she steadied, Skye mentally slapped herself. Eyes on the prize. Once Thanos had them, once he no longer had need of her - had no need to find some way to not only hold her but to ensure she wouldn’t try anthing as foolish as a badly thought out escape plan - he would have no reason to threaten Earth.

She might be able to persuade him to let her leave, to be left alone back there. Or, of that was wishful thinking, she could at least ask to be sent on other tasks, tasks that would take as far away from the Infinity Stones as possible.

But, God, those things had a pull.

Skye supposed that she had known that they were alive, had felt it back on Earth when they had seemed to toy with Ultron’s mind. She had felt the Mind Stone playing little games, fiddling with people’s lives to get what it wanted. Or, at least, as close to wanted as an inanimate stone could. Oh yes, Skye had known that they had pull. She had just assumed, foolishly, that she was immune to them.

Clearly she wasn’t. And there was not a thing she could do about it. If she had her way, she would avoid the Infinity Stones the rest of her days. But she had made a deal with Thanos and she was not going to back out on it now. She had already given up too much.

All those thoughts passed through her head in a second, and then Skye was back in the moment, spinning to face whomever had shot her. Her laser gun was coming up, her finger squeezing the trigger almost without her conscious thought. In a matter of seconds, she had returned fire at roughly the area where the shot that I got her had come from. She heard a yelp then a curse of pain but it wasn’t even close to the level of ferocity that she would expect if she has managed to seriously hurt someone.

Skye scanned the scene, the efficiency born from necessity rather than experience. See? Just because she didn’t have the experience of other agents didn’t mean that she was completely helpless. She could make do. She could work around that, at least until she had gained that experience honestly. Or dishonestly. She wasn’t picky.

There were three more that Skye had missed in her haste to take down the two she had hit from. They looked completely human, right down to the dress sense. They looked… Well, they look like every henchman Skye had ever seen, like some SHIELD agents even, with their black combat clothes designed for efficiency of movement and to not draw too much attention. A lot lie what she was wearing, actually.

Right. The Infinity Stone was trying to do… Something. Scare her. Right, that was what Skye had come to the conclusion it was doing. At any rate, it made sense that the world in ruins, her Earth, would contain people that looked like they were working for Hydra. It made perfect sense that that was what Skye feared the most: a world ruined by those arseholes.

Skye squeezed the trigger again without even bothering to go for cover. It wasn’t the smart thing to do, but then again Skye didn’t even know if the constructs of the Stone could hurt her. If they were real… But then the Infinity Stones had proved to have crazy amounts of power before. Just because the Stone was ripping off Skye’s worst nightmares didn’t mean that those nightmares weren’t real now.

But she hit one of the man without even trying. Something struck her as odd. Skye squinted, dropping down slightly so that a particularly large piece of broken cement gave her a bit more cover, even if the lattice of rusted metal sticking out secured her view slightly. None of the men had moved. None of them had moved after the first shooting. After they had first seen her face.

They had hesitated. For some reason, they had not thought to shoot. Skye considered. There was no in-universe reason for them to hesitate when it came to returning fire, or when taking down an opponent. No in-universe reason. But there might well be one that related to how the world had come to be.

It was clearly Skye’s worst nightmare. For whatever reason, maybe something to do with how much time she had spent with the Mind Stone, this new Infinity Stone had latched on to Skye, was using her as the fuel for this nightmare universe it had created. If Skye was a fuel, then it might not be able to exist independent of her. Skye wasn’t there than the whole universe disappeared.

It would explain why none of the pseudo-Hydra goons had tried to hurt her. The constructs of the Mind Stone, even if they operated independently of it, probably had some kind of failsafe, some kind of programming, to ensure that they didn’t hurt the… host.

Skye winced at the word. It was appropriate, the Infinity Stone was leeching off her like she was the host to a parasite. It also told Skye something that she had been wondering about. If she couldn’t be hurt by the creatures of the fake universe, there would be no need to protect her from them, no need for the hesitation they had shown. But because they had hesitated, Skye knew.

The things the Infinity Stone had created were real, or at least real enough to do real damage.

That could be problematic. Or it would have been if Skye didn’t have effective immunity. But she was safe from being killed, possibly from them at all. And she had questions, and could easily stop them if whatever the Stone did to ensure that she wouldn’t die didn’t protect her from being injured. It was a terrible idea. But the questions…

Skye kept her weapon out as she stood up. It wasn’t raised, just there. Like a security blanket for a little kid. The two men that she hadn’t hit didn’t react, just continued staring at her. Their jaws were open. Something about the whole situation just didn’t feel right but Skye put it down to the fact that they weren’t real.

“Take me to it.” Skye didn’t bother to ask. She just gave the order. She assumed they were something like with Mack and the Obelisk, following the commands of whomever was meant to be there. The thought made her stomach churn but Skye pushed away her fury on Mack’s behalf.

After all, the last she had seen of him, Mack had been treating her as the enemy. Because, hey, he needed protecting from her.

The next he would have heard of her was probably her siding Loki. Wonderful. Way to live down to expectations, Skye.

But, just as Skye expected, the constructs followed her order. They turned to walk in the direction Skye’s power confirmed was the way to the Infinity Stone.

As they walked, she barely paid the constructs any attention, only occasionally pausing her scanning of the apocalyptic ruined hallway to watch their reactions. Something was scratching away at the back of her mind, something familiar about her surroundings.

But then she noticed something about the two men she was following that captured her complete attention. They were sweating, the both of them. One was even trembling slightly. Skye knew that reaction. She knew intimately. That was how you acted when you are scared beyond all possible reason.

Skye could feel the tension knotting up on her shoulders. She focused on her breathing, still scanning her surroundings for danger but beginning to focus inwards. Her control over her powers was increasing daily and had taken several giant leaps when subjected to the… intense training that only the Mad Titan could provide. Still, it paid to be careful. She really didn’t want to bury herself alive, not when she was so close.

In front of her, the two creations came to a stop. Skye pulled herself out of her head long enough to see where they had brought her.

Her breath caught at the sight of the giant dome in front of her. It was… beautiful. It was made of some kind of metal, that much was obvious, but it was a metal that Skye had never seen before. It was perfectly smooth, as smooth as glass, not a mark on it. It might as well have been conjured whole, because there was no evidence as to how or why it had been made.

Well. No outward evidence. But Skye had a pretty good idea why the gigantic dome had been made. It had been created to house the Infinity Stone, to protect it. Before she could stop herself, Skye sent out the tiniest of pulses, the tiniest vibration. Time seemed to slow, the wave skittering through the air, sliding along and then through every solid surface in the gigantic cavern the two creations had brought her to.

The wave return stronger, enfolding her like one of Pepper’s hugs. It felt warm and comfortable and safe, everything that Skye knew the Infinity Stone wasn’t. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. She knew she was in danger, just as she was aware that the Infinity Stone was influencing her. But she couldn’t go.

Distantly, she felt the two remaining humanoid constructs of the Infinity Stone fall back silently, but Skye’s attention was elsewhere. It was firmly riveted on the dome in front of her. There was no obvious way in but Skye felt a dreadful sense of certainty that it wouldn’t be a problem. After all, the Stone had latched onto her. It had a plan for her.

If she wanted to get in, she had no doubt that the Stone would let her in.

She stepped forward, gently running her left hand over the smooth surface. She knew the term ‘silky smooth’. She was a Stark; she had slept on silk sheets for years. But there was an oily quality to the material that was completely foreign to Skye. She supposed that it must be some alien material that there was no way she would know.

Head snapped up. She realised what had been bothering her about the whole place, all those bare concrete corridors, even covered with debris and water. Of course it was familiar, she had spent so much time there, since shield had first fallen. She was in an aircraft hangar, the dome taking up much the same amount of space as a rather large plane. Say the Bus.

The ruined complex was the Playground.

In that moment, if Skye could have destroyed the Infinity Stone, she would have. What it was doing, that was just sick. How dare it tear into her like this, not just dragging out worst-case scenarios but showing them to her, showing how badly it all could end. She had no idea what it wanted from her, but there was no way she was going to give it after that. Besides, she had a deal with Thanos, and she couldn’t afford to defy him.

After all, he would probably destroy Earth just to spite her, if she turned against him. She was not going to have her sacrifices be in vain. Her free hand drifted down to the slight bulge that was the casing of Ultron’s USB drive. She wasn’t going to have his sacrifice be in vain.

And she wasn’t going to throw away any opportunity of making her way back to a compatible computer. Of making Ultron sacrifice never have happened.

Wait. She could feel the dome through her left hand. She could feel the metal through the previously unfeeling and slightly melted scar tissue from the Mind Stone burning her hand as she fled into that portal, back in Sokovia. Since then, she had felt nothing. Nothing but the dome.

Sudden scorching heat seared into Skye’s palm, and she couldn’t help but let out a yelp. But she couldn’t yank her hand away from the dome that presumably housed the Stone. She tugged, increasingly frantic as her skin felt as though it was melting into the material. Again. The only sounds were her grunts and frantic panting as she reached up with her other arm to try and rip the first one away.

Just as suddenly as it had started, the heat was gone and Skye stumbled back. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds but the pain had made it seem so much longer. She began to back away automatically before a sudden hiss from the dome had her stilling, caution winning out over the urge to retreat.

The seam that appeared in the silk like metal was razor thin first, but it began to expand, slowly and quietly.the opening didn’t go all the way to the top of the dome, not even close it was almost exactly the right height to let Skye in. No, it was the right height to let her in. Creepy.

In a perfect world, Skye wouldn’t go in. She would do what the voices of pepper, Rhodney, of Coulson, of them May, a thousand other people she card about were screaming at her. Don’t go in. The worst thing she could do in the situation was go in. She had laughed at to many girls in horror movies the irony not to come and bite her in the butt.

She went in anyway. She wasn’t that scared little kid anymore.

It was dark inside, and cool. She hadn’t really been paying much attention to the temperature outside but it had been good enough as to be unnoticeable. Inside the dome, it was a few degrees too cold. It felt as though all the life that might’ve been there, that could someday have been there, was being drained away.

And there, in the exact perfect centre of the dome, was another Infinity Stone. What little light there was came from it, though Skye’s eyes were fast adjusting. It wasn’t easy though, the orange lights of the Stone rippled like water. The thing was almost… breathing. Because clearly the creepiness factor needed so much more uping.

Skye couldn’t say what it was that made her realise that she wasn’t alone. It was like a scratching at the back of her mind. Actually, it felt a lot like her awareness of the Infinity Stone. One second her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom of the dome, then her breath was sucking in slightly at the other presence, even if it didn’t feel like danger.

She turned slowly, hand drifting back to her recently holstered laser gun. A shadow waited patiently just to the side of the opening that Skye had passed through. A slight shiver of fear passed through her; if whatever it was had wanted to her damage, it could’ve. She had been so preoccupied with the Infinity Stone that she had passed right by it.

With a snick, the opening in the dome began to close. Skye is adrenaline spiked as her exit disappeared but she didn’t make any move for it. There was no need to show her desperation. Instead, she kept her eyes on the figure, willing her sight to adjust just that little bit faster.

The last bit of the opening closed. All of a sudden, the light pulsed brighter from behind Skye, that sickly orange of the Stone. But Skye almost in care about that. Instead, she stared in horror at the sight before her. At the person before her.

That jawline. Those dark eyes. That freaking smirk.

Grant Ward, without a swear word in the place of middle name for once, though Skye was sorely tempted. Jeez, and to think that she had been worried for the guy. While she had thought he was being held prisoner, apparently he was hanging around the Infinity Stone. Skye let out a scoff, part annoyance past disbelief. The smirk widened, pulling at the three parallel scars on his right cheek, where some animal had clearly raked its claws through him.

Wait, scars?

Skye looked again, and the exasperation died. The scars were, in Skye’s increasingly informed opinion, at least a year old. It was new enough that it still had the slight reddish purple tinge around the edges where the skin hadn’t yet got used to the weight was stretched but it wasn’t the pink of newly formed scar tissue.

In short, it wasn’t the Grant Ward that had been in the spaceship with Skye just that morning, or whatever time f day it had been,so hard to tell in space. Which left only one possibility: along with Skye’s deepest darkest fears, the Infinity Stone had dragged up the version of Ward that still inhabited Skye’s nightmares, dropping friends into the ocean and killing other SHIELD agents.

Skye let out a shaky breath, a single indulgence, and then she straightened. She wasn’t scared. Well, that was true at all. She was scared; that was what the Stone was feeding off of. But she wasn’t going to let it beat her. The thing in front of her was only a nightmare, dragged out into as close to the light of day as she could get. It didn’t have half the power that it had in her mind.

Fake Ward tilted its head, the smirk shrinking a little. There was something in its eyes that unsettled Skye, even more than the real Ward. It looked… sad.

“Its been a long time, Skye,” it said, taking a step towards her. “You have no idea how strange it is to see you alive.”  



	6. What You Are In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get worse for Skye, Loki is a knight in shining armor and they go properly head to head with the Guardians of the Galaxy for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I may have left my laptop at my uncles when I stayed at the coast on what was (for me) a four day Australia Day long weekend. Then I realised that what I had before didn't fit with where I wanted to go. And now the next chapter needs to be rewritten as well. And I had such high hopes for sticking to the schedule. How does a midweek chapter next week soundto make up for it and bring me back in line with the schedule?

Skye shoved down the sense of dread at the fake Ward’s words. It wasn’t real; there was no threat that it would know that she didn’t.

Annoyingly, SHIELD training didn’t cover what to do when agents were with fake constructs imitating their ex… something who turned out to be a traitor who now seemed to be helping the agent. But probably had an agenda, because it was Ward.

Scratch that, SHIELD training didn’t cover Ward. End of story.

All Skye had to go on was her anger, and the knowledge that the fake Ward was something that had been deliberately dragged up from her subconscious to scare her. The stubborn part of her simply wasn’t going to let him. And, after all, the Stark stubbornness could bend the rules of space and time.

So she notched her chin up, and threw her shoulders back. Distantly, she realised that she had seen this defiant pose before, although she didn’t mask hers with humour and snark the way her father so often had in front of the media. She pushed that thought away; he was a universe away, there was no need to think about him.

“What are you doing here, Ward?” she asked. The question itself wasn’t what mattered, rather that she looked him dead in the eyes, without a blink and without the slightest bit of rancour or hesitation. There was so much she didn’t know about how the Infinity Stone created things from scratch but she figured it was a safe bet to treat the thing like it was actually Ward, and the need for it to scare her would be reason enough for it it to react convincingly.

“I’m here to see you.” Skye was forcibly reminded of all the things that Ward had done his escape from SHIELD custody. The tone was nothing like the smirk or the reverence he had displayed before, but it was that same kind of lack of dissembling that had been so strange coming from such a consummate liar as Grant Ward.

The thing wanted to act like it was sincere? Fine, then. Skye would act as though it was sincere. “Okay then, how did I die?”

Something passed in front of Ward’s eyes, something that Skye had never seen that before. In anyone else, she would have thought that it was guilt but that couldn’t be possible. Ward was a sociopath; he didn’t feel anything like that.

“Can we not talk about that?” he asked. “There are a thousand things that we could talk about. Let’s talk about one of those.”

Skye scoffed, just a little. “You seriously want to avoid the topic of how I died? If you are so keen to see me, if you miss me as much as you want me to think you do, why wouldn’t you give me the information that might help me stop it?”

That was definitely a flinch. As if Skye needed any more proof that the thing wasn’t Ward. It was trying, oh yes it was trying, but it still wasn’t completely convincing. It did make slip ups, things that Ward would never do. Like flinch.

The construct recovered quickly. “What’s the point if it can’t be changed?”

“Everything can be changed.” Skye was on the far side of the universe, possibly even in a pocket universe outside of the one she was born in. She was a villain, taking orders from a galactic warlord that she was more than a little terrified of. She refused to believe that had been inevitable. That she was always going to end up there.

It might have been a mistake, but it was her mistake. She would own to it.

“No, Skye.” It sounded like Ward, it look like Ward but there was nothing it could do to erase the sense of wrongness. Everything it said made it abundantly clear that it wasn’t Ward. “Some things were always going to be.”

Once again, Skye’s first instinct was to scoff, but something held her back. Maybe it was something in the way that Ward was looking at her, even if it was a fake Ward, but it still sent a shiver down her spine. She knew that it was all in her head, that it was all stuff that was intended to scare her but, as determined as she was to not be scared she couldn’t help the feeling that there was something desperately wrong.

That didn’t mean she would give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had shaken her. “I get the feeling that we’re talking about more than just my death here. You know I’m not a shrink, right?”

If Ward was aware that it was bravado he gave no indication of it. “Skye, I don’t–” He cut himself off, running fingers through his hair. For the first time possibly since he was revealed to be a Hydra traitor, Skye saw Ward looking genuinely distressed. “I shouldn’t be here. This was such a bad idea. It can’t– It can’t be changed. I don’t know what I thought, what I thought that I could do about it all. You’re dead. This, all this is done. You’re something that doesn’t exist.”

The prickling along Skye’s spine grew even stronger. It made no sense why the fake construction would say something like that. It wasn’t scaring her, at least not the way she expected it to. Instead, Skye could feel the darkness pressing in, was acutely aware of the pulsing orange light of the Infinity Stone. Was it her imagination, or was the light getting stronger, almost like it was feeding off something?

Was it feeding off her? That was the only theory that Skye could come up with. She knew that it was using her to come up with the whole scenario, was reaching down into her darkest deepest fears to make the whole thing. Was that the point? Was that why the Infinity Stone was feeding off her?

If it was fear that it needed, it would have gone for the person who was the most scared. A flash of a purple, alien face skittered across her mind. Her jaw ached in sympathy with the effort it had taken her to learn the coarse, guttural language of the warlord she answered to, a language he had insisted she learned despite the translator thing they had implanted in her.

Oh, yes. She was very scared indeed.

“If I don’t exist, then why are you bothering to talk to me? If I don’t exist why did you come here? You’re not the sentimental type, Ward. You wouldn’t have come here for no reason. So why are you here?”

He hesitated for a moment. Skye held no illusions that the construct would actually give her a straight answer, but she was still hoping that it might unintentionally reveal something. What, she still had no idea but all that had been said so far had helped her put together the edge pieces of the puzzle. All she could do was hope to collect some of the interior ones.

“I was hoping– But it doesn’t matter what I was hoping. It never matters what either of us wants, does it?”

Skye narrowed her eyes. That certainly wasn’t part of her nightmares. She had a sneaking suspicion that the Infinity Stone was moving on to her insecurities. What the hell were these things? Until that point, the question had been hovering distantly at the back of her mind but Skye hadn’t cared enough about them.

She didn’t need to care to hunt them down but she was starting to suspect it might be a good idea to know what exactly she was up against. These things weren’t just objects to be collected; it was almost like they were thinking.

“Whatever you say, Ward,” Skye said, almost on automatic. Her mind was awash with a thousand possibilities, was spinning off to plan how she might track down some information on the Infinity Stones. Even though they were still trapped in there, the fake Ward was already gone from Skye’s mind.

The few moments of silence was suddenly interrupted by a low boom.

Every one of Skye’s instincts screamed at her to duck, but she managed to avoid it. Instead, every single one of her muscles went completely rigid, locking in place as they had rarely done before. At the same time, Skye’s breath was trapped in her lungs as her throat and nose closed automatically. Even in the low light, Skye could see the small amount of dust that had been kicked up off the floor by the shock, just as she could see that none was sifting down from the smooth metal protection of the Infinity Stone.

Someone wanted to get in. And that someone was arrogant enough to think that they could force their way through the protection of the Infinity Stone with brute force. Skye deliberately didn’t think about how that’s what she would have tried if the thing hadn’t open for her.

“I’d forgotten about that,” the fake Ward said idly. Skye stared at him, before turning to the Infinity Stone, dismissing him. She had no idea what the construction was talking about but she also wasn’t going to waste any effort thinking about it.

If someone else was after the Infinity Stone, Skye had more pressing issues.

Every hair on her body stood on its end as she forced herself to take a step closer. When nothing happened, she took another. Her throat  and lungs hadn’t unlocked since the explosion mere seconds before, and she had no doubt that was down to fear. But she did need to breathe so she let herself stay in that spot for a few seconds as she forced her body to obey and do were needed to be done for her continued survival.

Once she was breathing again, Skye once again turned her attention to the Infinity Stone. It was just… There. It wasn’t moving but the shifting and rippling of the light gave the impression that it was. Skye clenched her left hand, her nails digging into the groove left by the Mind Stone but not feeling a thing. She really didn’t want have to carry another one of them.

But what else could she do? She needed to get the Infinity Stone to Thanos, and she didn’t have her first plan available. She had no way to know for sure whether the same thing that had caused the Stone to burn itself into her palm would affect Barnes’ metal arm the way it had affected her flesh one, but she had to try.

That had been the, for lack of a better word, plan. Skye suppose that if there had been a sure fire way to do it, if the danger of the Stone could be so easily circumvented, people would be doing it all the time. The only thing that she could imagine getting in the way was how rare the Stones were. If there were none of them around, there was no reason for people to figure out a way to transport them easily.

That was the theory that Skye had been clutching tightly, the desperate hope that she wouldn’t have to carry it again. Because, make no mistake, if the Infinity Stone had to be carried, then she would be the one to do it. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the villains, at least to not do something stupid as stab Thanos on the back, but it was Skye who was on the line if they didn’t succeed in their mission. She would be the one who would have to explain to Thanos what went wrong.

Oh, and she totally didn’t trust Ward. Because he was Ward. Obviously.

“If you think any harder, you’re going to break,” Ward said. Fake Ward. Skye grit her teeth, partly in response the comment and partly in response to the fact that she had almost slipped up and forgotten that he wasn’t real. It was really convincing, far more convincing than the nano mask had ever been. It was like it was actually Ward,  though the scars proved that it couldn’t be.

The ideas of what Thanos could do with the Stone were really, really scary. Skye tried to not think too hard about it. She had her reasons for doing it, reasons that were good and valid. She wasn’t trying to be a villain, even though she knew she had become one. She was trying to protect her planet.

At the back of her mind a nasty little voice whispered that she wouldn’t have to do it if the Avengers weren’t so dysfunctional. She pushed that voice away, only to find those fears of what Thanos might do with the Infinity Stones pushing themselves back to the forefront of her mind. He could raze entire galaxies, create universes in his image. He could–

No! No, Skye refused to think about that. She had something that she needed to do and so she would do it. Distantly she had another boom and the structure shuddered again. It might just be her imagination, but Skye thought that she could see a sliver of metal over to one side, not too far from where the fake Ward was standing, that looked much lighter than the rest. It was as though it had been damaged enough that it wasn’t completely blocking all the gloom outside.

Fire shot up her arm, and Skye’s head snapped around to look in horror at her left hand, once again holing a Infinity Stone. When had she– No, she had more important things to worry about. More important things to worry about than the fact that she couldn’t remember crossing the room and trying to grab the Infinity Stone. She was holding it, and it hurt. That was all she needed to know.

She needed to get out the structure, get away from whoever was trying to break in and get back to the ship. Only there would she feel confident enough to let go of the Stone… if she was able. If nothing else, once she and the others were safely away, there would be nowhere for any of them to run to if they tried to take the Stone away. Sure, they could always try and take out Skye, but–

But Skye was enough of a villain to realise that that would work to her favour, that it would prolong Thanos’s hunt for the Infinity Stones. It would prolong the hunt, and it would keep her safe even longer because Skye would still be the chief huntress.

In fact, as terrible and as horrible as the thought was, it was actually in Skye’s interest for one of the other villains to take an Infinity Stone. She supposed that someone else could take it, and she would have to hunt for it then too but there was no way to predict them, not in the same way she could predict how the other villains would react, at least to a certain extent.

Maybe… Maybe she could persuade one of them to take a Infinity Stone. If one of them took it, just grabbed it and around, Skye would have to do her best to track it down. And she would, she would do her best. It’s just that her best might mean hunting that villain across the galaxy, particularly if that villain and had a pretty good idea of how she operated.

And there was really only one villain who knew her well enough for that: Ward.

Skye gently tucked the thought away. It was a thought bubble, not even the beginnings of an idea. It was something brought on by the fact that she was half delirious with pain. It was the fact that she was still staring at the fake Ward that one of the Infinity Stones had created, looking at the scars too deep to belong to the Ward she knew. It was the fact that she was stuck in a nightmare, and she might not even be talking about the little dystopian ruin of the Playground.

No, the Stone in her hand was the wrong Infinity Stone to use for the plan that was beginning to form in her head. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t continue to sketch out the plan in her mind, that she couldn’t eventually persuade the real Ward to steal one of the other Stone.

And when he did… Well, at least it would buy her sufficient time to try and figure out a way to get back to Earth, and to protect it even when Thanos had all the Infinity Stones. She could do that.

She wouldn’t have any choice.

“Skye?” the fake Ward asked. “You still in there?”

Skye snapped out of it. Her eyes flickered to his, and the face that had been slack due to her inattention suddenly contorted with the pain she was feeling. It was like she had been completely off-line. She sucked in a breath, trying to grab… something. It was like she was reaching for something and couldn’t find it, the terrifying sense that something important was missing and she couldn’t find it the matter how hard she searched.

Focus, she need to focus. Skye sucked in another breath, then a third. She was almost hyperventilating, and the fake Ward was staring at her as though there was something extremely and deeply wrong. Skye pushed that out of her mind, because she needed to focus on pushing away the sensation. She sucked in a breath, slower, and pushed out even more slowly. Straight away, she took in another breath and then let that out too. It made her feel better, if only slightly, so she did it again.

She couldn’t say how long it took her to get back to an unpanicked state, but it had to be at least a minute. It was only one she was calm again that Skye realised the pain in her left hand had subsided. She looked down in surprise, and really wished she hadn’t. Oh, the Infinity Stone was still there alright. It was very emphatically there.

Skye’s flesh seemed to have melted around the Stone, like a chocolate bar left in a hot car. It had flattened out her hand and had spread fairly evenly outwards from where her flesh would have been, across the surface of the Infinity Stone. Skye felt a flash of nausea bubble up.

The only thing that stopped her from throwing up was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any bones in her hand. It wasn’t just the her flesh had melted off her skeleton, it was like her skeleton had melted too. There was something else going on entirely.

Breathe. She needed to breathe. She had to stay calm and figure out what the hell was going on. She deliberately didn’t look up when she heard the soft sucking in a breath that was apparently the closest thing that Ward had to tell. Instead, she swallowed. She wasn’t just trying to deal with her incredibly dry mouth, she was also metaphorically swallowing down all the fear, and the not small amount of anger at anything and everything that had taken her to that moment.

“Well at least no one will be able to steal it,” she muttered to herself. Good thing she wasn’t planning on using that Stone as bait for the real Ward. No one would be taking from her. Unfortunately, Skye could only imagine how Thanos was going to relieve her of it.

Ward let out a shaky chuckle. “That’s true.”

Skye ignored him. If there had been more explosions outside the protection of the dome, she had missed them entirely as she was drifting off. There were many more lighter patches in the dome that there had been only a few minutes before, and Skye had a terrible feeling that she couldn’t delay much longer.

Whomever was outside would be getting in very, very soon and Skye needed to be ready. She had no idea what would happen if the universe that the Infinity Stone had created was destroyed, and she wasn’t going to risk the fact that her powers might disrupt the whole thing, given that they seemed to be working on the same frequency.

Sure, she had managed to locate the Infinity Stone earlier but that wasn’t the same thing as fighting back with her powers. It was a completely different order of magnitude of strength. So she would be careful, and she would fight back like she was– well, like she was human.

Once again, she pushed away the thought that the mysterious woman that her father had had sex with that some conference or another and who had showed up at the Malibu mansion nine months later with her my actually be an alien. The crazy doctor that had called himself her father - though he had later admitted to her, even as SHIELD and Hydra were clashing around them, that he was actually her stepfather - had seemed to think the world of Skye’s mother.

Of course, he was completely nuts. Like, all the supervillains and galactic warlords appeared more stable than him, nuts.

Skye wondered if that was why she was having less trouble adjusting to space than either Ward or Barnes were. It wasn’t that the other two ‘humans’ were in danger, or hurting, not exactly. It was the little things. It was that slight shock when something strange happened, it was the difficulty in thinking in 3D. It was their lack of intuition about how alien technology works, even though Skye hadn’t seen all that any more than they had.

When they had been looking for the source of the alien writing, SHIELD had learned that the alien species had been called the Kree. Those had been the things who’s blood had caused the reaction in DC, but not in Skye. Skye may not be blue, but if she had to pick a candidate for alien species she was most likely related to, that would be them.

Skye wasn’t entirely sure that her Dad in the middle of a particularly interesting conference would notice that the woman he was having sex with was blue. The Kree that Skye had met while with SHIELD made it obvious that at least some of them had a way of disguising it, but she wouldn’t put it past her Dad. It was disturbingly plausible.

That said, from everything she had heard about the Kree, Skye really hoped to never run into any.

If she could have, Skye would have tightened her hand around the Infinity Stone. Instead, she just raised her arm. She tried to look beyond it, but the lump that was her melted flesh and bone was extremely obvious. She looked at it a few seconds, before finally tearing her eyes away and glaring at the side of the dome.

Her intent must have been sufficient to activate the Infinity Stone, because the low level glow exploded into a burning light. Distantly, Skye saw Ward flinch away, a hand coming up to shield his eyes. Skye would have thought that she would get some vindictive pleasure from forcing the reaction out of Ward, but that wasn’t the case. Instead she just looked at him impassively.

But before she could do… Something, whatever she had been planning to do to bring down the dome, the Infinity Stone pulsed. The pulse passed through Skye, her body throbbing in sympathy. Then the pulse travelled through the air, passing invisibly through Ward as though he didn’t resonate, before being absorbed into the dome.

The whole thing shuddered for a second, before stilling. A heartbeat passed, and then the same door that Skye had come in through slid open again, causing the fake Ward to start. Skye had no idea how she had done it, but she had done it.

The tactical part of her knew better than to exit the protection of the dome, instead drawing her gun with her right hand. No matter how cool it looked in movies, wielding a gun with one hand was never particularly fun, the lack of strength making it harder to hold up, and aiming was less reliable.

Whoever had been trying to get in might well be smarter than Skye was, or at least better trained, but that didn’t negate the fact they would have to go through the choke point. Technical term. See? Skye was a real agent, trained and everything.

Once again, it was her Earth-centric training that let her down. She was all ready to shoot whoever came through the opening, but she was aiming at human height. The walking raccoon caught her completely by surprise even though she should have known better, since Ward’s - the real Ward’s - proof of life statement had been him complaining about it.

And, of course, because that was Skye’s life, she completely missed the shot. She had been aiming at the height of a normal human, and she simply didn’t have time to adjust her aim – though she did try – when she realised that it was a raccoon. Her instincts were to not lose the advantage of the choke point, knowing all too well that she would never get an advantage like that again. So she shot too soon.

Even as Skye was firing, the raccoon hit the ground. Not that it was very far to go, the animal was hardly the tallest thing in the dome. But that meant that it got down with considerable speed, and was up again almost in the blink of an eye. But then maybe that was just how quickly it always moved, because it was on Skye almost before she could blink again.

Skye  moved as fast as she could, almost surprising herself with her speed. She barely had a moment to process that the fake Ward was pressing himself into the shadows, almost impossible to see unless someone knew what they were looking for.

Of course the thing would stay out of it when Skye most needed help. Her life just wasn’t that easy.

But her attention was quickly drawn away from the annoyance of Ward – real or fake – by the need to get away from the raccoon. She had only just managed to avoid swipe of its claws, but she could see it continuing the direction of the movement so that its other arm could swing around the ridiculously oversized gun that the real Ward had mentioned.

Reacting on instinct, Skye brought up the Infinity Stone so the raccoon could see it. “You really think you can take it from me?” she asked, letting it see the way her flesh had melted around the cursed thing, the effect thankfully stopping just passed her wrist.

It was not a pretty sight, and Skye only just managed to suppress a swallow even though she had already known what she could expect to see. The raccoon, however, dropped its gun in surprise, it’s very little mouth dropping open just as quickly. It was actually kind of humorous to see what surprise looked like on the furry mammal’s face.

“What the hell are you?” Skye blinked, stunned. She hadn’t expected the accent, frankly hadn’t expected the creature to be able to speak at all. It was a stupid thought really; it was capable of wielding a gun then surely it was capable of talking.

That said, Skye had vague memories of her Dad taking her to weapons shows when she was young, before Pepper had been around to put her foot down, and if what she could remember was accurate then the ability to talk coherently actually wasn’t correlated with the ability to fire a gun, at least in humans.

But Skye was already using the raccoon’s moment of surprise to her advantage, even as her mind was speeding down another track. Recently, it was as though not only did she not need to focus on what she was doing, that she wasn’t even capable of doing so even if she wanted to. Skye was blaming it on the Infinity Stones. Because why not?

Skye’s kick connected solidly with the rodent - were raccoons rodents? - but it was heavier than she expected and only slid away a few paces. But the force behind it was enough to stun the raccoon, and hurt Skye’s foot enough that she suspected she would be limping slightly for a while.

She went for the door, a more substantial gap opened by the raccoon’s displacement. She spun as she went, raising her blaster to fire shots randomly in the direction of the raccoon. She heard a yelp, but it wasn’t a yelp of pain. Clearly it had avoided being hit, but was distracted enough that it wasn’t firing back as Skye backed out of the opening in the dome.

Yeah, like it would be that easy.

The sword sang through the air, and Skye dropped to her knees completely on instinct. The weapon continued its smooth movement above her, thankfully not slicing through her neck as the trajectory suggested it would have.

Skye straightened her leg out and whipped it around. There was a grunt as she connected, and someone else dropped down to her level, gracefully folding down onto one knee.

It took Skye a moment to realise that it was a woman, or at least feminine. The alien was green, and why not? The Kree were blue. Why shouldn’t there be a green humanoid alien? Skye was basically at the point where she had given up applying logic to the way the universe worked.

There was a fury in the woman’s eyes that Skye didn’t know what she had done to earn. She was not someone who had much experience with being hated, and certainly not by someone who could never have met her before. It was disconcerting.

But Skye barely had a chance to notice what she felt before the alien was swinging her blade yet again. Skye tucked and rolled, once again acting on instinct and hoping, praying that for once her instinct wouldn’t work out against her.

Then, suddenly, the woman was upon her and her sword was swinging down, sure as a guillotine. It took Skye less than a fraction of a second to realise that she couldn’t move fast enough to avoid being sliced in half, so she did the only thing she could.

She swung the round ball that used to be the - separate - Infinity Stone and her left hand at the alien, slamming the Stone into her gut.

For the briefest moment in time, the two of them were suspended, frozen. Then the other woman’s eyes widened in horror, and Skye felt her left arm begin to burn again.

It was only because Skye was looking into the alien’s eyes that she saw the glimmer of orange kindle in the depths. She was already processing what must be about to happen when that small spark burst into flame, and the orange fire ripped through the woman’s body. It was a certain death sentence for Skye to leave the Infinity Stone against her.

Skye pulled her arm back.

Later, she could justify it a thousand ways to the other villains but, in that moment it came down to one simple thing: once, she had been a hero. A quiet, unsung hero as all good SHIELD agents were, but a hero nonetheless. She wasn’t quite so far gone that she could let that go.

So she pulled the club that was what had become of her left hand away from the woman, and the green alien collapsed as though she were a puppet whose strings had been cut. She was breathing heavily, and her eyes were probably wide but it was hard for Skye to tell with her head bowed. But she was alive, and she wasn’t coming after Skye.

That would have to be enough.

Skye should have known better than to expect the universe to let her get her breath back. She saw the movement out of the corner of her eye, a flash of what little light there was hitting dull metal. Once again she was ducking and diving, trying desperately to get out of the sights of whoever was about to take a shot.

She felt more than saw the bolt from the blast to go sailing over her head, it was that close. For a second, she thought she was a goner, so severely outnumbered was she. She was good, but she wasn’t a miracle worker.

Then a solid but leanly muscle arm curled around her, hauling her behind an equally solid body. The rubbery material of the wetsuits made a squeaking sound as they rubbed against each other – Skye had almost forgotten about those, so preoccupied had she been with what was going on – and Skye knew instantly that whoever it was was on her side.

“Lady Skye,” Loki said respectfully. “I apologise for such manhandling of your person but it seemed appropriate in the circumstances.”

Skye opened her mouth to reply, then grabbed his head and pulled him down with her, as a bolt came sailing by. For the first time, she got a glimpse of the shooter, of demonic red eyes set on a metal face.

And she wasn’t talking about Ultron.

Then, just as the shooter was raising one of two – two, had he ever been told about the lack of stability when only one hand was on a gun – when it was his turn to step out of the path of blast of fire, the bolt hitting a piece of concrete right behind where he’s headed been. Skye lowered her weapon, a small sliver of satisfaction working its way through her.

“And now it seems as though I am indebted to you,” Loki said, even as Skye began to drag him backwards towards the only person who would have made that shot. Barnes.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said, almost absentmindedly. “You saved me first. At worst were even; at best, I owe you.”

Loki looked at her consideringly. “I think you may have those the wrong way around.”

Skye shot him a look that said exactly what she thought of that observation. “I did it the way around that made most sense to you.”

They pulled even with Barnes and Loki, still with an arm around her pulled Skye in tight between them.

“Why would I consider an imbalance between us to be a good thing?” he asked.

The raccoon had recovered and was also firing at them so Skye took a moment to raise her own blaster - it was a miracle she was still holding on to it - and raised it to fire back as best she could with only one arm available to steady it.

“How did you find me?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Is it really that difficult to figure out?” Barnes asked. “We were both following the sound of explosions. We ran into each other, thought it best to come and see what was up.”

Skye nodded slowly as her mind worked through the way it must have gone down. It made sense, the most likely place for any Infinity Stone was where there was danger and murder and mayhem. Running towards explosions made sense. Besides, it worked out in her favour, so Skye wasn’t going to question it too deeply.

About a quarter of the way around the ruined hanger, another alien strode - well, limped - into the fray. Once again, it was surprisingly humanoid but its skin was a network of red lines on a pale background. It also had a truly impressive amount of muscles stacked on to its tall frame, almost too much to be human.

Skye didn’t need to look at Loki to feel the intense sense of satisfaction radiating off him. She would bet a considerable amount of money that he was the one responsible for the aliens limp, the favouring of one of his knees.

“Didn’t you hear that it’s unbecoming to gloat?” she hissed at him, as she took a step back, tugging at Loki to come with her. It was mostly for show, they all knew that Skye didn’t have anywhere near the physical strength of the other humans, let alone Loki.

He chuckled low in his throat but didn’t resist as she attempted to pull him away. She was still firing but Loki didn’t have any long range weapons. At least, he didn’t until his hands began to glow an eerie green. Urgh, magic.

The both of them had fallen back a good two meters before Barnes realised that their shots were coming from behind him, rather than next to him. He took a moment to whip his head around and look at them, before looking back at where their opponents were also consolidating their forces. Though Skye didn’t see his face change, she nonetheless got the impression that he grimaced.

Within seconds, he had backed up until he was level with them, surprisingly surefooted as he moved backward through the rubble. Skye couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy, which she immediately squashed. If they got out of everything alive, she would get Barnes to teacher had do that too. Until then, jealousy was hardly productive.

Skye risked a look behind her. There was a corridor behind them and not too far to the right. Even better, it appeared to be deserted. One of the most annoying things to Skye about their lack of intelligence regarding their adversaries was that she had no idea of their numbers. The possibility of an ambush made her understandably jumpy.

They were in the corridor in a matter of seconds. While the walls gave them shelter and a small gap through which blaster shots could come through, it also constrained their movements. Nor did having to navigate the small area filled with rubble help their speed.

Skye barely held in a wince at the speed with which their opponents were covering ground and getting closer.

“Please tell me you have a plan to get out of here,” she said.

As though the heavens themselves were answering her question, the corridor - wall, roof and all - trembled for a moment. Skye stilled, feeling the villains beside her doing the same. At the exact moment that she realised the trembling was centered in a section of roof halfway between them and their adversaries, it exploded.

Skye was tossed off her feet, landing hard against the concrete. The material of her wetsuit thingy protected her from scrapes but it didn’t stop the non-physical hurt as she looked up.

Ward.

It took her a second to realise that his face was unscarred. He was the real one.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

Skye pushed down the nausea she felt seeing him. She threw a glance over where the explosion had occurred. There was only a wall of rock there, effectively stopping the other group from pursuing them.

She steeled herself. She was so ready to get out of the Infinity Stone’s godforsaken pocket universe created from everything she had ever feared.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

 

The dome was cold and dead without the Infinity Stone. When he had been focusing on the sounds of fighting beyond its walls, grant had been able to ignore the hollowness he felt, but with no audible signs of life there was nothing left to distract him.

Without even allowing himself a backward glance at where the capstone had rested, Grant exited the dome and headed in the opposite direction to where it sounded like Skye and the Guardians of the Galaxy had gone.

Once he had given him pleasure to see the destruction of the shield base where he had been held, but even those enjoyments faded with time. It was with dispassion that he made his way to Coulson’s old office, unsurprised to find the human guards under his command cowering in the best fortified area of the complex.

“Get what absolutely cannot be replaced. There is no need to hold the space any longer.”

Most of the ten soldiers there, breathe a sigh of relief, but one looks perplexed. Another, a frequent troublemaker frowned, an early warning sign that his temple was about to explode.

“You can’t seriously be saying that we had to guard this godforsaken place for close to a year, just to abandon the first sign of trouble?”

Grant felt his face harden. “I hope you’re not trying to reason why. After all, do you know what your role is?”

One of the men swallowed, seeing Grant lightly run a hand over the brand on his left forearm, before nodding. “Ours is but to do or die.”

Grant smiled. That one knew his place. “There is no longer a need for a guard here. As ever, this is all according to Her plan. Congratulations. You get to go back topside.”

Even the troublemaker knew not to push Grant any further, particularly when it was in that same man self-interest to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

After all, Grant came and went but the others had been posted under the Atlantic and all its terrifying new monsters for over a year. Earth was nothing like it was, but on land was still better than under the sea.

As they all scurried away, Grant pulled out a phone. It was the technology of a few years before since there was no need to develop any more. It wasn’t as though the population had any need to innovate. What they needed was provided. What they didn’t need wasn’t allowed.

The phone rang for nearly fifteen seconds before the other end picked up. “All went according to plan,” Grant said, his voice deferential with just a hint of pride at having successfully completed the mission.

“Good. There is far too much that can go wrong between timelines,” the voice said on the other end. “You’ve done well, Grant.”

There was no delay in the words reaching him, even though the speaker was halfway across the universe. Nor did the distance affect the frisson of accomplishment that passed through him. This was his purpose; this is what he had been bred for.

And he shouldn’t regret what it was necessary to do to Skye to bring it all about. It was never going to end any other way. She needed to get the Time Stone, aand that had meant that it needed to be kept secure. Frankly, grant didn’t get it. But that was okay, it wasn’t his job to understand. His job was to make sure that Skye got where she needed to go. Even when he hadn’t known it, it had always been his job.

In the past as in the present and the future.

It had always been his job to lead Skye to her end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting schedule:  
> \- chapter 6: 7th of February 2016  
> \- chapter 7: 11th of February 2016  
> \- chapter 8: 14th of February 2016  
> \- chapter 9: 21st of February 2016  
> \- chapter 10: 28th of February 2016  
> \- chapter 11: 6th of March 2016  
> \- chapter 12: 13th of March 2016  
> \- chapter 13: 20th of March 2016  
> \- chapter 14: 27th of March 2016  
> \- chapter 15: 3rd of April 2016  
> \- chapter 16: 10th of April 2016  
> \- chapter 17: 17th of April 2016  
> \- chapter 18: 24th of April 2016  
> \- chapter 19: 1st of May 2016  
> \- chapter 20: 8th of May 2016  
> \- epilogue: 15th of May 2016


	7. All Roads Lead To Knowhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Skye is novice-level sneaky, borderline emotionally manipulative/nosy and apparently terrifying to people who don't actually know her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urgh, I hate not being able to keep my commitments so, from now on, I'm going to schedule a chapter every two weeks. I'll still try to write one a week so that when predictably unpredicatble delays come up, I can still make it. There might also be the occasional bonus chapter on those occasions that delays don't come up.
> 
> At any rate, enjoy.

Skye found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the stubby ball of flesh and stone that used to be her hand.

“You could take it off at the shoulder,” Barnes said, finally looking up from the spare blaster he was taking apart.

She supposed that he was trying to get a better idea of how they worked, and tried not to think about how he had gotten the blaster with a much swoopier design than any of theirs.

It took her a moment to realise that he was talking about her arm. About amputating it. “As funny as it would be to be a matching pair, I think I’ll pass.”

Barnes shrugged and the movement finally broke Skye’s focus on the Stone. Glad for the distraction, she looked over at him. Loki, she knew enough of to get his measure and Ward… was unpredictable but his unreliability and untrustworthiness was a known quantity. The Winter Soldier, however, was not.

Skye considered him. Of the villains, he was actually the one to which she had the least objection. Ward was Ward and, for all Loki was reliable due to answering to Thanos, the Trickster was also not someone Skye would prefer to work with. She still held a grudge for Coulson. But Barnes…

It hadn’t taken her long to realise who exactly the Winter Soldier was. Bucky Barnes was alive, and wasn’t that strange. To Skye he was one of Aunt Peggy’s bedtime stories, a good and brave man lost to the tragedy of war. As she got older, Skye wondered if perhaps he wasn’t an object lesson from a woman who had seen Skye’s father expand the family weapons business.

Skye could make some educated guesses as to exactly what had happened to Bucky Barnes. It wasn’t compliment to her and it wasn’t a compliment to Hydra the things that she could imagine. But they were just her imagination, her speculation. None of it was reliable, and she knew that.

That was why she had come up with a little test. It was nothing particularly impressive, nothing that would make her father proud. But that was part of the reason why she had decided to go with it; it had none of her dad’s complexity, and none of the risk of failure that came with it.

“So what did they do?” she asked, leaning backwards.

Both Loki and Ward were at the other end of the ship, manning the controls. That had been Skye’s job before, because she had been better at it. With the use of only one hand though, it fell to the other two to do it.

Frankly, Skye suspected that Loki would be good enough on his own, but Ward didn’t trust him and Loki didn’t trust Ward to do it on his own. So the two of them were squabbling up at the far end of their small ship, leaving Skye and Barnes to talk quietly at the back, where they couldn’t be overheard.

“I didn’t find Ward,” Barnes said with a grimace. Skye got the feeling that had hurt his pride little. “Loki, on the other hand…”

Skye sighed. “He has his own agenda. Of course he has his own agenda.”

“He sure seemed to know his way around that place really well,” Barnes said.

Skye considered. Once she had realised where they were, she had had a better mental map of the way the half ruined corridors intersected. But even then it wasn’t anything to write home about. For it to have been good enough for Barnes to notice, Loki must have been navigating the ruins particularly indeed.

“Suspicious. What else?”

“He knew the hostiles. The ones that we ended up fighting to get out, I mean. Called them the Guardians of the Galaxy, really rubbed their faces in the name.”

Skye nodded. “Even more suspicious. But still possibly coincidental. That all?”

“The woman, he acted like he knew her real well. Called her… Gamora. Got the impression they didn’t like each other much. No doubt that they knew each other, though.”

Skye sat back, considering. Yes, it was definitely suspicious and it didn’t help her trust Loki at all. Then again, she supposed that she didn’t need to trust him to not have an agenda. She just had to trust him enough to be sure that he wasn’t going to try and kill her in her sleep.

And she suppose she did. Whatever he was up to, Loki had yet to make a move against her. If anything, he was somewhat eager to take orders from her. Again, suspiciously eager but nothing  conclusive. With the Asgardian nicknamed the God of Lies, however, it was possible that nothing would ever be conclusive.

“Thank you for telling me this,” she said seriously. “I understand that Loki was originally the reason why you came here. I do appreciate the position that I’ve put you in.”

Barnes shrugged. Skye wasn’t all that surprised, everything he had been doing indicated that he felt no particular loyalty towards Loki. “Figured that you’re a more reliable ally than him, and more honourable besides.”

His word sparked a small glow in Skye’s stomach, a tiny bit of warmth in what was feeling like a very large and very cold universe. She was the most reliable of the villains, as faint praise as that was. But Skye would take what she could get.. It might be the only thing close to a compliment that she would be getting for a while.

Delicately, she asked: “if you don’t think he’s reliable, why were you working for him back on Earth?”

“He offered me something that I wanted, I wanted out of where I was and I honestly didn’t have anything better to do.”

For a moment, Skye thought she got a glimpse of the devil-may-care soldier who was in some of the old films that her grandfather had stored quietly away from the public, the ones that showed actual people rather than just propaganda pieces. Skye had sometimes wondered if her grandfather had been trying to protect their memory, or if he had been trying to keep pieces of them to themselves. If he had been trying to keep everything that they were from being co-opted.

That flash was gone by the time she spoke again. “Was that you wanted?” she asked in a hushed voice. She didn’t think that the others would overhear, but she considered it to be polite. She was asking a deeply personal question that she had given him no real reason to answer.

He looked at her hard. Skye resisted the urge to fidget, looking back calmly. If she stole her placid look from Coulson, well there was no way for Barnes to know that. She waited patiently, refusing to give up even the slightest twitch for fear of startling him. In some ways, he reminded her of a scared, wild animal.

He must have seen something in her that gave him reason to trust, because he gave the tiniest of nods. “My memories.”

There was a well of sadness and tragedy in the way he said it, not because it was self pitying but because of how flat he had tried to make his voice, and how close he had come to succeeding. Only the faintest rumble revealed that he was anything more than the brainwashed puppet that Hydra had tried to make him. Skye felt a long since familiar rush of hate towards the organisation had done so much to ruin so many lives.

“You do know who you are.” It wasn’t a question. “You gave me your first name, and you didn’t protest when I chose to use your surname.”

“I know. It’s just not the same thing as remembering.”

Skye nodded. She may not have any experience with that personally that she could see how that could be the case. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for him to stumble upon evidence of his past, once he was away from Hydra. She could come up with a hundred scenarios how that could happen, each and every one as irrelevant as the last.

“What exactly are you trying to remember?” she asked gently, still prodding at the heart of the matter. After all, he had come away from Earth even though he was supposed to be looking for memories.

“I… won’t know until I find it.”

Skye frowned. “Then how could Loki offer it to you?”

Barnes finally looked away from her, off into the mess of pipes and cables that lined a lot of the hull towards the back of the spaceship. “He found me and he offered. I figured that a god that seemed to know that much was a better bet than anything I could think of.”

It wasn’t a call that Skye would have made, but then Skye had people who she cared for, whose absence was still a raw wound. Maybe she would feel differently if she thought that she had nothing to lose. Maybe. But that was all speculation. Still, a picture was starting to form for her of Barnes’ thought process, even if she disagreed with it.

“Okay, but then why would you follow him away from Earth? Surely your best chance at recovering your memories is back on Earth, with Captain America.”

Once again, Barnes came very close to keeping his emotion off his face and, once again, Skye picked up on it. Okay. Maybe Captain America wasn’t the best topic of conversation, especially when she was trying to feel him out and get his measure. She would keep that in mind.

The silence stretched. Once again, Skye felt the urge to fidget and fought it hard. Barnes’ silence wasn’t one of rejection; he wasn’t protesting loudly against her invasion of his privacy. Nor had he just walked off, which should be far more in character. He was still there, and he hadn’t done anything to avoid answering the question. So Skye tried to find in her the stillness that May had spent so long trying to drill into her and wait out Barnes’ thoughts.

“I don’t remember the guy he knew,” Barnes said at length. “To me, he is face in the newsreels. My face, but still a face. It’s like I have a twin I never knew, and he was a much better person than I could ever be.”

Something in Skye perked up like a hunting hound scenting a fox. “I met him, briefly. Captain America, I mean.” She didn’t know if he knew that. “He seemed like a decent guy. He must know that you don’t remember who you used to be.”

“But that’s just it,” Barnes said, slightly more loudly. “I’m not that guy. It’s not just the memories; we have had completely different lives. And that makes us different people. And I… I’m just not that guy. I’m not that good guy.”

Skye leaned in, reaching across the small amount of space between the two benches bolted to either sides of the spaceship. She had to stretch a little, but she could just reach Barnes’s hand, slipping hers into it. Her intact hand in his flesh one, And a heart-to-heart moment between two bad guys. Skye tried to ignore the symptoms of symbolism overload.

“I know what it’s like to not be what someone expects you to be, to not be good enough,” she said, picking her words carefully. “I know what it looks like when someone has unreasonable expectations that can never be filled. And Captain America? He doesn’t look like that. I know it’s a bit late now, but I think that you could go to him and get no judgement. All he wants is for you to be happy. Regardless of who you are.”

Which was more than she could say about her Dad.

Barnes didn’t look completely convinced, but he also wasn’t actively voicing his doubts. Skye took that as a win, or at least a sign that she didn’t need to go on. She took a deep breath, her eyes flickering over to the front of the ship. 

There would be time enough to talk about all that later, to convince Barnes… to convince Barnes to go back to Earth. Skye didn’t know how she would manage it, or how she would help him get there, but she knew why she was doing it.

She wanted him to go back because she knew that she couldn’t, at least not yet. And if he managed it, then perhaps there might still hope for her someday.

To jar her out of her thoughts, Skye stood abruptly. She tiped a slight nod at Barnes, before striding towards the front of the ship. Let him stew on that. Hopefully her fantastic and well reasoned argument would be enough. If not to completely commence him, then at least a plant the seed. Besides, Skye would rather not lose him too soon. If she did, and she would be stuck between Loki and Ward.

No one sane wanted that.

Ward was at the controls when Skye got there, focusing hard on the view outside the front windscreen of the spacecraft. He barely even looked up at her, all the more noticeable for how much attention he normally paid her. Loki on the other hand, looked up and smiled. It was a very convincing smile, as though the Trickster was genuinely happy to see her.

“In which direction shall we be flying?” Loki asked. There was something in his eyes that put Skye on edge, as though she was in the middle of a test to which she hadn’t been given the instructions.

“To Thanos, of course,” she said, focusing her gaze on the stars spread out ahead of them.

Space was darker than she had anticipated, as stupid as that thought was. Of course it was dark; it was space. Even light had trouble travelling the distances required to illuminate the planets and the stars spread out before her. While the spacecraft had artificial lighting, it was pretty pathetic, leaving the interior with a perpetual eerie glow that did nothing to blot out the view.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ward asked, his eyes flickering to the stump that was her melted flash over the Infinity Stone. Ward – the real Ward – had said very little about it, but Skye could see how deliberately he was avoiding looking at it. Strange, it bothered her far less than she had thought it would. If anything, it seemed to disturb Ward more than it disturbed her.

“Yes. I work for him. We all work for him. This is his Infinity Stone. And we need to take it to him.”

Ward still looked doubtful, but Skye turned slightly to look at Loki. He didn’t seem to have any particular problem with it, but there was something in his eyes still. Something faintly dangerous or untrustworthy, if those two things could be separated.

Skye had some sort of inkling that Thanos had a greater hold over Loki than he had over any of the other villains. Why else would he trust the God of Lies with one of his precious Infinity Stones? She had no idea what that hold was, but she knew enough to know that if she didn’t go back of her own volition, Loki would force her.

“And if he takes your hand to get it?”

Skye turned to look back at Ward. “Do you really think it’s much used to be in this state anyway?”

Ward had no answer for that.

 

“They must be working for Thanos,” Rocket snarled.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were tending to their various aches and bruises – and, in Drax’s case, stab wounds – in the Milano. Of all of them, Peter was perhaps the less injured, not that it would spare him much grief.

Later, there would be much grumbling about that because Peter always seem to come out of it the least injured, and he would argue that it was skill while the others would continue to grumble. For all they claim to be heroes, they were Galaxy class whinners.

“It is certain. The Asgardian Loki fell into Thanos’s clutches before I departed,” Gamora said. Peter noted her delicate wording about how she had left Thanos, rather than defected from him. He supposed she figured it wasn’t a defection if you had never had any loyalty to begin with. “He has not the capacity to leave on his own.”

“Never mind that, what’s the thing that looks like a girl? It seemed to be the most powerful and the one in charge but the others seemed to be protecting it.”

As ever, Rocket’s bravado increased exponentially when he was scared. Not that he didn’t have a right to be; Peter was scared to. Even Ronan had been somewhat affected by holding that Stone but the woman had seemed to ignore it completely.

Except when she had shoved it into Gamora’s stomach.

Peter’s jaw flexed, remembering the fear. Whoever the woman had been, she could easily have killed Gamora, and for once Rocket was right. The fact that she had barely flinched at carrying the Infinity Stone suggested that she was far more powerful than anyone had a right to be. The fact that she seemed to be allied with Thanos was more than worrying.

It was terrifying.

So of course Peter was going to get the Guardians to deal with it on their own. Go to the Nova Corps for help? Ha.

“Gamora, did you know her?” Peter asked.

Gamora was by far and away the best source of information on Thanos. On the Infinity Stones, not so much. If Thanos had known their whereabouts, they would already be in his possession. It had been a combination of Peter and Rocket’s less savoury contacts that had helped Gamora piece together where they had found the latest Stone, the one they had lost.

“No, I have never seen her before.”

Drax, surprising everyone, ask the pertient question. “Would you know all in the Titan’s employee?”

There was a beat of silence as everyone looked at Drax in surprise before Gamora worked through it enough to answer. “No, not all. But one powerful enough to hold a Infinity Stone with little trouble? An entity like that I would know.”

“So Thanos has been recruiting,” Peter mused out loud. That could be… worrying. Particularly if the Mad Titan had managed to find a reliable source of being as powerful as the one they had just faced. After all, there had been a certain amount of scrabbling on the girl’s part, a lack of preparedness or of experience. He could only imagine what a properly trained one could do.

Well, he could imagine. He just wished that he hadn’t.

“That’s what it looks like,” Rocket said.

Drax opened his mouth, no doubt to make a comment about how their prowess would allow them to crush this new threat with ease. Peter had gotten rather use to statements like that since they had formed the Guardians. He rather wished it would stop.

He jumped in to head off Drax. “We need to take this new threat out of the play, and retrieve the Infinity Stone,” he said. He looked deliberately at Gamora, usually the Guardian most likely to back him up. But she was frowning.

“We should seek the assistance of the Nova Corps,” she said. Rocket sneered while Peter rolled his eyes. The raccoon managed to start speaking before Peter.

“Please. If there was anything they could do about Thanos and his cronies, they would have done a long time ago. They certainly wouldn’t continue letting people like us continue to do their dirty work so publicly.”

“They need us, enough to risk tarnishing their precious goody-goody reputation,” Peter added, realistic even though he wished it wasn’t so.

As much as he liked to joke about them being a bit criminal, he preferred to think of it as being heroes their own way, not someone else’s. He kept that to himself, however, since no one else seemed to agree with him. It didn’t stop him from thinking it though.

“That does not prevent them from being of help if asked, even if they would not be able to do so on their own,” Gamora said.

Rocket snorted again. “Yeah, as cannon fodder.”

Peter felt the need to impose some kind of order, if only because he liked to think of himself as leader. “Come on guys, all this is doing is killing time. Its not actually getting us anywhere.”

“Then what you suggest, Star Lord?” Gamora asked.

Peter grinned. He knew exactly what he wanted to do stop

“We need to go to Knowhere.”

 

Skye’s return to Thanos a stronghold was to a significantly different welcoming party than her first arrival.

In short, there wasn’t one.

Loki brought their pathetic piece  of stolen scrap metal masquerading as a spaceship down on one of the outer asteroids with a sharper bump than Skye could have managed, causing her to wince. She quickly wiped the expression of her face when she saw that Ward had pulled the same expression.

The other three hung back, at least aware enough to know their place: always at least a step behind Skye whenever in one of Thanos’s domains. She was by far the most valuable of them, and the one who was meant to be in charge. However that played out in reality, they knew what appearances needed to be kept.

A small thrill passed through Skye as she jumped the last ten inches from  the spaceship’s ramp to the barren grey dust of the asteroid. It was part fear, part stress.

For a moment, she felt the disconcerting separation between reality and what her mind thought was still real as she instinctively tried to close her hand around the Infinity Stone. Tried to use muscles that didn’t even exist anymore.

She deliberately didn’t look down at her hand as she began  to march across the flat surface. She had wondered before how the could possibly be gravity on some of the smaller outlying asteroids, one of which she had seen when they had first left  the stronghold.

But now that she was delaying, trying to buy time before she had to go see Thanos, she could see the slivers of metal and some kind of creepily organic looking matter threaded through a ground otherwise made of stone and space metals.

Of course the asteroids weren’t as naturally occurring as their rough appearance made them seem. Their flatness alone should have clued her in.

“The incoming,” Ward murmured as he took half a step closer to Skye so he could say it low in her ear.

Normally she wouldn’t appreciate Ward getting so close and reminding her of the times when she used to want him to be close, but she focused on the warning that she was begrudgingly grateful for.

It meant that she could school her face, summoning up a stoicism and the acceptance that she never used to think she had. That had been Coulson and May’s area of expertise. Needs must, though, and she did needed it all to face Thanos.

She managed to keep her breath even when she saw who it was but it was a close run thing. He must have been alerted in advance and had verified who was onboard the spaceship. Skye had thought they had landed a little too easily.

“Lord Thanos,” she said carefully, holding in a wince at the way Thanos’ language cut at her throat. Perhaps someday she might have it in her to test him and use the translation ship, but it certainly wasn’t when she had an Infinity Stone fused to the arm.

She was very emphatically trying to accustom herself to the idea that it might not be her arm very long.

“Nemesis,” Thanos said, still radiating menace even as he swept an arm to the side, indicating that she should come closer, draw level with him so that they could walk.

She felt that the instant his eyes landed on the Infinity Stone. She tried to hold her breath as subtly as possible. Please don’t be angry. Please don’t be furious. Please don’t be like every supervillain ever.

She finally  let out the thought that she had been holding in ever since she had realised what the Stone had done to her: please don’t kill me to take it from my cold dead body.

The moment passed. Skye slowly let the breath sift out of her, feeling as though she had lived a life time in those few instance. She felt a little lightheaded, shaky not with relief, but for it with from the absence of quite so much stress and fear. Somewhat, anyway.

“We met with resistance,” she said, taking a few steps towards him.

It was only then that she realised there was something off about it. It looked… unreal in a way that she had never seem before. It was as though there was no weight to the image, even though the interplay of light and shadow was plausible, even in the gloom of space.

It hit her: she was looking at a hologram. She had seen some around of course, but it looked so much more real. The others she had seen were flickery and scratchy, the visual equivalent of vinyl compared to digital files. Surely the technology at the stronghold couldn’t have come so far in a matter of days?

As if to answer her question, a flash of heat travelled up the arm that had fused with the Stone. Skye couldn’t help but swallow. Oh, okay. Maybe the technology hadn’t come that far in so short a time and, oh god, the Stone was messing with what she was seeing.

Well, the fact that Ward had warned her meant that at least she wasn’t talking to thin air. She also doubted that thing was a nightmarish vision conjured up by her subconscious. It was almost as though she was looking at the hologram and the Stone was layering in details over the top.

If Skye was back on Earth, she would be seconds away from creating an online petition to turn ‘Infinity Stones’ into a corse word. Curse phrase, whatever. 

“You have the Stone,” Thanos said, interrupting her thoughts. Skye didn’t shake herself, but only because she knew better than to insult Thanos by demonstrating that she wasn’t paying attention to him.

“More than I intended,” she said with a slight grimace. Failure was unlikely to be met with compassion from Thanos but she felt that it was necessary to demonstrate that it hadn’t been her intention to keep  the Stone from him. She figured it was prudent to make sure he knew that.

Thanos watched her, face almost inscrutable. Still, Skye got the distinct impression that she was being weighed and measured as she had rely been before. All her worth summed up and judged by a galactic Warlord. She tried very hard not to wonder what he saw.

“You will come to the throne,” he said. It wasn’t in order; it was a decree.” I find myself with a dearth of daughters.”

It took Skye a moment for that process. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the slight tension in Loki’s shoulders even from some distance away. For a second, she had the terrible thought that Thanos was going to impregnate her.

Then reality kicked in, and she remembered an offhand comment Loki had once made about Thanos making strong warriors and those who wanted to possess his sons and daughters. Adopted, true, but it was the warlord’s way of reducing those beings to objects, and objects that belonged to him alone.

Skye straightened her spine, and inclined her head slightly. She had no idea if the gesture also meant respect and possibly acquiescence in any of the galactic cultures, but she would have to take chances. Thanos had made a decision, and she was in no position to gainsay him.

So she was to be his daughter, then.

“It would be my honour, Lord Thanos,” she lied, hoping that it wasn’t too noticeable.

Thanos smiled, a full terrifying grin. That didn’t tell Skye whether he was pleased with her acquiescence or found her pathetic attempt at lying amusing. Urgh, aliens.

He sobered. “Have your subordinates prepare your ship. You leave immediately after the ceremony.”

Skye wondered whether decrees were Thanos’ standard way of talking before her mind caught up with what he said.

“My Lord?” she asked carefully.

He - or the hologram - began to walk towards one of the small skiffs used to ferry Thanos’ minions throughout the asteroid field. Skye followed, realising that the hologram was hurrying her along without doing anything so plebian as telling her so. After all, that would imply that he didn’t have all the time in the universe.

“Did you think that I have been idle? No, since you departed those who answer to me have found another Infinity Stone.”

Skye just managed to bite back a retort about why he bothered to take her from her home if he wasn’t going to use what made her unique. It was a close thing, and Skye felt her nerves become shaky with how close she was skirting disaster.

“Thank you, My Lord,” Skye said quietly, wondering if she was overdoing it with the deference. Her throat didn’t appreciate even two extra words.

The hologram flickered slightly, and the Infinity Stone apparently had a small lag because she caught a glimpse of the worse hologram underneath, just for a brief instant. Then the Stone caught up.

“The one who currently possesses this Stone has been… an annoyance in the past. He has been cautious and has the Stone moved frequently. But his greed is ever his undoing and he cannot resist pawing at his prizes with pathetic regularity.”

Skye got it. “I will bear in mind that I will only have a brief window of time.”

Something like the twisted cousin of a fond smile flickered over Thanos’ lips and was gone. “See that you do. Knowhere is Tivan’s territory. Escape will not be easy if you fail.”

With that, the hologram flickered out of existence a fraction of a second before Skye realised where the next Stone was and groaned.

It looked like they were going to Knowhere. The place she had picked at random as a metting point for the hostage exchange that never happened.

The place where the so called Guardians of the Galaxy may well be waiting for her.

Joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On hiatus until May 1st 2016 so I can figure out how to solve the plot hole that keeps appearing when I try to get the story to go where I want it to.


	8. Doesn't Mean I'm Lonely When I'm Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki is not helpful, Nebula... introduces herself and Skye is tired enough to do something drastic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the hiatus is over. Chapters are still coming every second week but they will be coming.
> 
> I totally didn't intend to coincide the new chapter with Civil War but it worked out that way, in Australia at least. I wish I hadn't paid extra to see it in 3D but I enjoyed it regardless.
> 
> Also, beware. This chapter gets graphic towards the end, so be careful if that's the sort of thing you're trying to avoid.

“You’re surprisingly well liked by villains for someone who always claimed to hate them.”

Skye had to physically bite her lip to stop herself from reacting to Ward’s taunting. Instead, she very deliberately looked at Loki. “What can I expect from all this?”

The Trickster covered his grimace pretty well. Skye wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking straight at him and seen the shadow of it in the depths of his eyes. She wondered whether it was for her or for his lack of knowledge. She put the thought aside. She had more pressing matters.

“Thanos is not known for treating his… children well,” Loki said cautiously.

Skye couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. She let her eyes slide away from his, refusing to put a name to the emotion there. She chose this. She might not have known exactly how it was going to play out but she had known that it wouldn’t end well. She would tough it out until she figured out a way out of the mess she had made.

The stub that used to be her hand itched despite Skye’s efforts to ignore it.

The ship they were in was much more comfortable than the wreck they had stolen from Knowhere but then their new ship was mainly used for the quick hops between the various asteroids that made up Thanos’ domain. With only that limited use, of course it was in better condition than the other one.

Wanting to see more than just the wall of the ship, Skye surged to her feet and crossed the few feet that separated her from the floor to ceiling window, allowing hew to look out across the asteroid field.

In some ways, looking out over Thanos’ domain reminded her of looking up at the Milky Way from Earth. The asteroids large enough to be used were far enough away from each other that the lights on them made up a constellation of small points out in the darkness, at least when Skye was so close to the edge of the asteroid field. Sometimes, a new point would appear suddenly as the asteroid the light was on spun lazily, the side the beings on it had used the gravity generators to designate as up rotating into view.

“Skye?” Ward ventured. She continued to ignore him.

“Nemesis,” Loki said, snapping Skye’s attention back to him, “Thanos is Thanos to everyone.”

Skye continued looking out over the asteroid belt, letting a few seconds pass before she gave a single half-nod. It was more acknowledgment that someone else had spoken than agreement. After yet another few seconds, she looked over her shoulder at Loki, her best source of information on Thanos.

“Did any of Thanos’ other… children have a choice?”

It was a stab in the dark that Skye wasn’t the first person that Thanos had decided to make his own, to claim in a way that made them something more, and it was immediately clear that she had scored a direct hit. The look in Loki’s eyes would have been answer enough but he spoke anyway. “Not to my knowledge. If it were the case, I would be surprised indeed.”

“Yeah,” Skye replied, turning back to look out over the stars. “So would I.”

They lapsed into silence. There wasn’t anything more to say after that. Besides, Skye would much rather try to enjoy the awe-inspiring view than turn back to look at Loki, Ward or Barnes. She didn’t want to see their faces, because she both needed to remember they weren’t the SHEILD team and to forget that she was stuck in space with no one to tell her that it would all be okay. They weren’t family; they wouldn’t offer her comfort and she wouldn’t like it from them anyway.

That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t like some comfort. She was just extremely aware of how far she was from anyone she cared about, anyone she wanted comfort from. She was human, after all.

So she continued to act as though none of the others were there, even when Loki brushed closer than he had to. She could still feel the gulf between her and the rest, those villains that were taking her orders. She had Thanos’ attention, much as she wished she didn’t. These tried and experienced villains weren’t enough to get such a monster’s attention but a random quirk of Skye’s DNA - hopefully from the mother she never knew because the thought of her Dad with powers was terrifying - did manage to hold the Mad Titan’s attention.

She let her breathing even out the way that May had taught her but it wasn’t enough to quiet her mind. So she held her thoughts tight and cast about for a way to remind her of why she had gotten herself into that whole mess.

Peace in our time. The words whispered back at her, Ultron’s voice feeling the same as pushing on a brand-new bruise, an awful ache that felt like it would never go away. Her brother had died for her, at least for the moment. Skye could do nothing less than make sure that it was worth it. She could show nothing less than as much courage as he had, even if she would be facing Thanos, not her death.

She hoped.

The spaceship glided effortlessly into the docking bay on one of the larger asteroids in use. The asteroid was the most populated of the ones in the field because it was the one that was best described as Thanos’ base of operations. All the actual work required to capture and hold the territory that Thanos claimed as his own occurred there.

Skye was first out of the ramp at the back of the spaceship. She noted, idly, that the optimum design for a non-gravity bound vehicle was pretty much the same regardless of whether it was a spaceship or a plane. She supposed that was why she adjusted so well to being on spaceships even though it could mean being cooped up for weeks on end to get from one destination to another.

For a moment, Skye was surprised that there wasn’t anyone there to greet them, same as the first time they had arrived at the Stronghold. After a few seconds reflection, it made sense. They had been new then. Maybe it had been part mistrust and part realisation that they would be of little use if they didn’t know their way around, but it was pretty logical that they had made sure there was someone to keep an eye on them.

Now that Skye was to be Thanos’s daughter, there was significantly less mistrust. She was also considered competent enough to find her way around. She was, in short, fully one of them. There was no need for anyone to follow them around, they were expected to do it all themselves.

Skye didn’t bother to look over her shoulder to see if the others were following her as she strode over to one of the side exits of the main hangar, the one that led straight to the residential area. As far as they knew, they weren’t expected anywhere soon so, in the short term, they could do as they pleased. Skye just wanted her bed.

Because she was going down one of the less used side-passages, Skye didn’t see any of the other creatures that lived in the Stronghold as she hurried along, fast enough that even the other villains fell far enough behind that she could not longer hear their footsteps. With a brief moment of shock, she realised that it had been weeks since she had last truly felt alone.

Even on the spaceship, she was aware that she was stuck with the other three, unless she felt like jumping into the vacuum of space. On the asteroid, however, she could conceivably lurk around in the less used corridors for days without any of the others ever being able to find her. All it would take was to go the other direction as soon as she heard footsteps.

It was tempting, though she wouldn’t do it. Still, the feeling that she could make that choice if she wanted was more than a little freeing and Skye could feel the knot of tension in her neck loosen slightly.

But it was so tempting, to just take a random turn and lose herself in the back corridors. She just didn’t see what good it would do. If Thanos wanted to see her and she couldn’t be found, the passages would just be searched until she was located and the consequences would be severe. Besides, what did she have to gain? What she wanted was to protect Earth and that wasn’t going to be accomplished by skulking about in the deserted corridors.

But first: bed.

Skye found her way back to the room she had been assigned without any trouble. She opened the door carefully, a good dose of paranoia something that never went amiss. Oh, wonderful. Now she was starting to sound like Loki, even in her own head.

Her paranoia was rewarded, though, as she opened the door. Skye saw a flash of metal out of the corner of her eye and she automatically ducked underneath the swinging sword, trusting her instincts completely.

The moment the sword passed over her, she darted to the side, letting the momentum of her movements take her into her room proper. Skye knew better than to run, and there would be no help coming from the Stronghold’s inhabitants. She might as well keep the fight in an area she knew well.

Without much conscious thought, Skye let her right hand drift slightly behind her, where her attacker wouldn’t see it. It wasn’t like it would be any use, and Skye really didn’t want to face the extra attention that the Infinity Stone would bring if it was recognised.

“This is the best the universe has to offer?” a voice hissed, soft and deadly. Even to her translation implant, there was a slight accent to the words. Skye didn’t reply, choosing instead to spin around so the wall was to her back and her attacker was in front of her.

The alien looked female, as much as Skye could tell. More strikingly, she was very emphatically blue, with metallic modifications visible. Her eyes were blacker than deep space. At least space had stars, glimmers of hope that were non-existent in her attackers eyes.

“I’ve never made such a claim,” Skye replied, deliberately copying the way Loki spoke. He was the most regally condescending person she had ever known, and Skye suspected that his particular brand of looking down on others to make himself seem more important would be just what was called for.

“It was made on your behalf,” the alien replied, voice still soft and almost purring but Skye could hear a new edge to it. She was pretty sure that counter point wasn’t something human voices were capable of. The alien also had a stillness to her that was at odds to the way she glided slightly to the left, to the right, then in and out. Skye didn’t take the bait as the alien tested her vigilance.

“I don’t make it a habit to defend claims others make,” she said, making sure that she faced the alien straight on at all times, even if that meant turning slightly to track her movements. “Regardless of what those claims might be.”

The alien sneered, there was no other way to describe it. “And you are to be a daughter of Thanos. The traitor Gamora at least had the strength to defend her reputation, and the reputation of our father.”

Skye felt like an idiot for not realising it more quickly. The alien was one of Thanos’ children. His other children, that was, since it wouldn’t be long before Skye was one of them. This wasn’t an alien being aggressive just for the sake of being aggressive; this was a warrior assessing whether she would uphold the clan’s honor.

Skye could respect that.

“I wasn’t under the impression that Thanos needed anyone to defend his reputation,” Skye said. It wasn’t the most cunning of traps but it was good enough. The alien would have to tiptoe through the verbal minefield if she wanted to continue to insult Skye without also insulting Thanos.

“No,” the other alien said, her eyes narrowing in a way that told Skye she would be glaring if she was human. She didn’t go for subtle; Skye hadn’t expected that given how soft her manner was. “But you do.”

Skye felt the moment stretch as she just stared dumbly at the alien. She didn’t want to fight anyone, she rarely did. But she had the feeling that if she didn’t stand her ground, she would spend the rest of her life running. She had Thanos’ protection, which was more than most other beings could say, but even Skye knew that protection wasn’t without conditions.

The last thing she would need, if that protection were to ever end, was Thanos’ children thinking that she was fair game.

Skye squared her shoulders. She looked the alien stright in the eye. Customs in space may be different than on Earth, Skye hadn’t put much effort into finding out, but she did know that acting like she was facing a human would at least give her the subconscious certainty that would make her front of confidence believable.

“What’s your name?” Skye asked. It must have seemed sudden to the alien because she blinked in surprise. Skye hurried to explain. “I won’t fight family without knowing their name. It’s not… honourable.”

For whatever reason, that seemed to make sense to the alien. “I am Nebula.”

Nebula. Huh. Skye had to admit that she kind of liked the name. “I’m Nemesis.”

Whatever reaction Skye was expecting, it wasn’t the one she got. Nebula flinched violently, the reaction all the more noticeable in contrast to Nebula’s previous calm. There was a moment of fear, quickly followed by disbelief and anger.

“You would dare use that name?” Nebula hissed. Skye blinked in confusion.

“It was the name I was born with,” she replied, careful not to back of but still letting her confusion onto her face. “Perhaps the translator is acting up?”

But the alien’s face had closed off. And yet Skye could see more than a glimmer of malice in her eyes. “Then its not your own reputation you have to live up to.”

Nebula took a step back. Skye got the feeling that she wasn’t backing off, not completely. Nebula was just regrouping. Still, Skye saw an opportunity to not be on the defensive as much and she took it.

“Then who’s reputation do I have to live up to?”

Nebula continued to look at her silently for a few moments before she spoke. “An old legend from my quadrant of the galaxy. But then perhaps you will not have to live up to that reputation after all. There are few of us left alive.”

That Thanos was the cause went unspoken. Skye didn’t know much about the children of Thanos but what little she had managed to wheedle out of Loki about how Thanos’ domain worked told her how lucky she had been to negotiate the deal that she had. Thanos didn’t like to share the things he thought he owned, and he tended to make sure that they had no home left to go back to.

Skye looked at Nebula, really looked. There was a quiet sharpness about the alien even when she wasn’t being overtly threatening but, now that Skye was really looking, she could also see an undercurrent of sadness. The alien probably didn’t even realise it was there herself. She probably thought that everyone felt that way.

“I will do my part,” Skye said quietly. “I do not intend to be the weak link.”

It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But just because Skye didn’t intend to be the weakest link didn’t mean that she intended to be on their side. Skye could be strong enough to hold the line but it didn’t take away her choice as to whether she stayed or went.

Priority one: peace in her time.

Priority two: protect Earth.

Priority three: get back home.

The deal she had made with Thanos protected Earth, but only as long as Skye stayed on Thanos’ side. As long as Skye was at Thanos’ side and assembling the Infinity Stones, there wouldn’t be peace and she wouldn’t get back home. And, if she got back home, Earth wouldn’t be protected and there would be no peace. A no win scenario.

Skye had a feeling that Nebula had experience with no win scenarios. She had survived as one of Thanos’ children, after all. And Skye knew there was a lot that she could learn.

She hated seeing another person as a resource as opposed to, well, a person. But there was a lot that Nebula knew that Skye could stand to learn, and she no doubt knew her way around Thanos’ organisation. She would also know how to stay in his good graces, to have survived so long.

Besides, Skye already had three villains at her back. What was one more?

“I’m sure that you have many important tasks to attend to,” Skye began carefully, “but you are, of course, welcome to join me and… mine whenever you wish.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, Skye knew that she had made a mistake. Nebula tensed up as though Skye had punched her, her formally calm face tensing only slightly. But even that small crack in her composure was enough to tell Skye that she had made some serious faux pas. The life of her, she couldn't imagine why inviting Nebula along would cause such a reaction, but it did.

"Are you so weak that you cannot achieve the task our father has set?” There was a wealth of disdain in her voice, and it got Skye’s temper up.

“No,” she bit out, her temper doing most of the answering, “Nor am I so insecure that I cannot respond to a genuine offer to a comrade in the spirit it was made.”

Another voice cut in, as though he had sensed that Skye was trying to channel him. “A shame you cannot make the same claim, Lady Nebula,” Loki said, taking Skye’s rash insult and digging it in deep.

And, just like that, Skye’s anger dissipated. It was replaced with annoyance, at Loki but mostly at herself for letting the situation escalate so quickly. What was she thinking, acting like that? She was hardly in a position where she could afford to make more enemies than she was already planning to.

“Enough, Loki,” she said. For a moment, Skye thought that someone else had said the words; a voice that hard couldn’t possibly have come from her. But the two aliens were looking at her. The look of genuine surprise was the first that Skye had seen on Loki’s face since they had met.

Huh. Skye hadn’t expected to like the feeling of catching him by surprise as much as she did.

The surprise melted away quickly enough, as all surprise did. The look of annoyance that replaced it held for a second. For those few heartbeats, Skye thought that Loki was going to ignore her. But then that passed too, and he took half a step back. His head bowed slightly and his entire body language spoke of contrition.

Skye didn’t believe it, but she would take it anyway.

“My apologies, Lady Nebula,” Loki said. The look on the alien’s face said that she didn’t believe it either but she didn’t call the Asgardian out on it. Skye was silently thankful for that small mercy. Perhaps the situation could be salvaged after all.

“That is the least you have to apologise for,” Nebula hissed.

Or maybe not.

“Don’t, Loki,” Skye said, cutting him off even as his mouth opened. Again, he stopped. Well, he paused, eyes darting towards her. Skye didn’t let a single muscle in her face twitch. That would be proof that she didn’t expect him to just stop at her word. She had a feeling that wasn’t the best thing that she could do with Nebula around.

Thankfully, he chose not to make things more difficult for her, though the glint in his eye told her that he knew just as well as she did that he was cooperating, rather than being kept on a leash. Skye better not take that for granted, because it would mean that she would have yet another problem to keep an eye on.

Once again, both their eyes were on her. Skye ignored the fact that, just a few years before, she would have been terrified just to be in the same room as either of them, never mind actually hold their attention. Even after all she had been through, it was still more than a little unnerving.

“Was there anything you wanted, other that to stir up a fight?” she asked Nebula. It was a risk, reminding the alien that she had come to Skye’s room so that they could fight. She did it anyway, mostly because she was tired and she just wanted them out of there so she could sleep. If just getting the fight over with was necessary, then she would do it.

Luckily, Nebula didn’t seem inclined to start it up again. True, something like a sneer stretched her lips, all the more noticeable because of the blankness the alien had shown when she had first arrived, but she didn’t attack. She didn’t even seem particularly aggressive.

“You will not have the Asgardian during the adoption ceremony,” she said at last. “That will show whether you are worthy.”

Again, Skye chose not to rise to the bait. There was nothing for her to gain by snipping at Nebula, or of returning the sharp words. She might think less of Skye but that was okay. Skye didn’t measure her worth by how much presumably mass murdering aliens respected her. Not very helpful back on Earth but, out in space, it was enormously useful. It meant that she could continue to keep her head down.

So she channeled her best impression of Pepper smoothing over Skye’s Dad’s latest escapade with the board members of of Stark Industries. She brought a small but respectful smile to her face, letting it grow slowly so it would seem more real. She leaned forward ever so slightly, swaying in as though the person she was talking to was the most interesting person she had ever met and she just couldn’t help it.

She hoped it was convincing. She felt dirty regardless.

“I trust I will be a credit to Thanos,” she said, cringing slightly inside. She felt pathetic forcing down what she really felt in the name of avoiding trouble. Part of her was screaming that she was better than that, and the rest was trying to reassure her that she was doing the right thing. No matter what her instincts were screaming.

Skye should probably be worried by the fact that it wasn’t the toughest thing she had ever forced herself to do. As terrifying as it was, she was starting to forget what it felt like to do things that she wanted to do. She was starting to get so used to doing things that she didn't want to.

Nebula looked at her, face still mostly impassive but Skye was beginning to get the hang of reading her. It wasn't the easiest thing Skye had ever done, but she was helped by the fact that she had at least seen a range of emotions from the alien.

Nebula began to move towards the door – at last, Skye's exhaustion cheered – but her move to exit was prevented by Loki continuing to hover in the doorway. From moment, Skye thought he wasn't going to move. She had her mouth open, words on the tip of her tongue to reprimand him, to persuade him to get out of the way so that Nebula can leave and she could sleep at long last.

But it wasn't necessary. Loki edged out of the way of his own volition, though only by a has breath. It was almost funny to see Nebula hesitate, trying to figure out whom she would rather risk having at her back, Loki or Skye. Skye wasn't naive enough to think that it was an accident on Loki's part. She wondered what outcome he was trying to force.

It took Nebula barely a second to decide. She turned pointedly to Loki, showing Skye her back. For a second, Skye thought that it was an insult. She thought that Nebula was trying to say that Skye was the lesser threat.

Then she saw the tension in the shoulders, the one thing that even otherwise stoic fighters will allow themselves, rather than allow themselves to appear scared. It wasn't that Nebula thought she was the lesser threat, it was that she… What? Perhaps that she wanted to make Skye stab her in the back herself, if Skye was so inclined. Perhaps, even in the far reaches of the galaxy, something like that was considered cowardly.

Perhaps Nebula expected it to destroy Skye's self-respect if she did something like that. That was vastly overestimating how much Skye cared what anybody thought of her, and how much Skye cared about anything other than getting back to Earth while keeping it safe.

The moment that Nebula was out the door - Thanos’ daughter didn’t strike Skye as the kind of person who would eavesdrop - Skye rounded on Loki with a glower that left no doubt just how annoyed she was. To be fair, if she hadn’t been so tired she wouldn’t have been so annoyed. But the same tiredness that made it worse meant that she also really didn’t feel like being fair.

“What were you thinking?” she hissed. It was a lot more assertive than she had been up until then, and it clearly took Loki by surprise. “We have to stay here indefinitely; making unnecessary enemies is not smart. I expected this kind of thing from Ward, not you.”

For a moment, anger flashed across Loki’s face for the first time since Skye had met him, before his face settled back into its normal vaguely amused mask. “She would have been your enemy anyway.”

“You can’t know that. Was it likely? Probably. But it wasn’t certain. You were the one who made it worse.”

Frustration began to seep through Loki’s mask. “You cannot go through this universe thinking that everyone you meet doesn’t want to do you harm.”

“Of course they do!” Skye regretted her voice increasing to a shout the moment that it did so but it was too late to take it back. All she could do was get her voice back under control and continue. “Of course they want to do me harm. But I refuse to give them an excuse to do so.”

“They will think you weak,” Loki said, his voice getting quieter where hers had gotten louder. Skye wondered if he realised that he thought the same way that Nebula did. If he didn’t, she wasn’t going to point it out.

“Let them. Anyone I can’t fight off probably wasn’t going to be deterred by posturing anyway.”

Something about the way Skye was acting, about the way she was holding herself must have been enough to convince Loki that she wasn’t going to be persuaded because he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing as he did so. He looked… Almost in pain. Skye couldn’t help the unkind thought that he mustn’t be used to people refusing to dance to his tune.

“We will continue this conversation at another time, when you are sufficiently rested to be able to see reason.”

Skye nearly opened her mouth to argue that it wasn’t his call to make, whether they would have such a conversation, but she thought better of it just in time. After all, if she had, she would have been doing exactly what she had been annoyed at Loki for: starting a fight that wasn’t necessary.

“Good night,” she said instead.  She even managed to say it gently, to swallow her anger and her annoyance at Loki’s high handedness. She wondered whether Loki was becoming more expressive or if she was just getting better at reading him when she managed to catch the flicker of surprise dancing across his face before it, too, was gone.

“Until you are rested, Lady Skye.”

The moment that Loki was out of the room, Skye collapsed on the cot. It was the only word for the contraption, as the term bed would imply some kind of mattress or comfort. It was little more than a block of semi-mettalic-ish space material with a single blanket but Skyewas so exhausted that she almost couldn’t believe that she had managed to stay upright without even the slightest bit of swaying.

Skye was so very exhausted, so much so that her eyes felt like they were so dry they were burning. She couldn’t believe that she had managed to push away how exhausted she was until that moment. But she still knew that she couldn’t go to sleep yet.

The sooner the Infinity Stone was gone, the better.

The room that she had been given was sparse and almost furnitureless but there had been some things in there that Thanos had gifted her. After a moment, Skye ignored everything her body was telling her she needed to do and rolled off the cot and stumbled over to a small trunk, the kind that people used to take on ships for long voyages. It looked much the same but there was a lock that had been specially keyed to her DNA. It was the most secure place Skye knew.

She knew that she should keep Ultron’s USB drive in there, that it would be safer than taking in into combat with her. It didn’t help; Skye still couldn’t bring herself to leave it on the off chance that she might see a way out of the trap she had willingly walked herself into. She refused to leave it behind.

She kept her clothes from Earth in there, and her human gun even though there were much better space versions of both. It was nothing more than homesickness but Skye didn’t bother to get rid of them. She had nothing to lose from keeping them and there was always the off chance that they might help her remember where she came from and why she was there.

But those mementos weren’t the reason that Skye had opened the chest. She pushed them aside impatiently so that she could get in at what she was looking for. The movement was so strong that she almost sliced open the skin of her arm on one of the many wickedly sharp knives and swords stored in there.

Skye selected one almost at random. It was long enough for the job and that was all that mattered. They weren’t her kind of weapons; she would have gotten rid of them if she hadn’t known how colossally offensive that would have been for Thanos, who had given them to her. As little as she liked having the knives and the daggers and the swords around, she didn’t have much of a choice.

She honestly hadn’t expected any of it to be useful. She had locked it all away so that she could bring some of the weapons out strategically and wear them where Thanos was likely to see. It was the technique that she had used for some of her actual Dad’s attempts at buying gifts, with considerably less fear for her life but only slightly less resentment.

Careful so she didn’t accidentally cut herself after that close call, Skye gingerly picked through the trunk, slowly removing one edged weapon after another. She didn’t lay them out neatly for anything but that didn’t mean she wasn’t careful with them. There was no point inviting trouble.

Once she had all the weapons spread out across the floor, not neatly but in a way that meant she could at least see all the different kinds that were there, she reached out and picked one up, careful not to dislodge any of the others that were resting against it. Skye considered it, half staring absently at the slightly warped shadow of a reflection of her in the mental.

She put it back down. It wasn’t the one she was looking for, the blade a shade too short. She wasn’t looking for any particular one as she looked down at the dangerous collection; she was looking for the one that would do the job the best.

Again, her mind shied away from thinking about what, exactly, she was planning to do. Necessity. Skye was coming to hate the word. She had thought it way too often in the previous few weeks. She had been doing things that she had loathed, had made her feel slimy and pathetic.

Once she belonged to Thanos, she wouldn’t have the luxury of indulging in those kinds of thoughts. She could barely afford to do so as it was. The very fact that she was anything less than all in on what Thanos expect her to do was a liability, both to her and to her planet.

Skye’s hand paused, hovering over one of the short dangers. It was shorter and easier to wield than a sword but also long enough to do what she needed it to do, unlike a dagger. She took in a breath for letting her hand slowly drift down to the hilt. She picked it up, testing the weight.

It would do.

Skye stood up, before hesitating and looking back down at the rest of the weapons. She almost left them all there before thinking better of it and turning to toss the dagger onto the cot. Both hands free, Skye reached down to toss the weapons into the chest, putting her clothes back in there too before slamming the lid. There was a slight whir as the mechanism locked it down again.

She stood up, her eyes resting unseeingly on the chest. All of her attention was focused on the dagger lying on the cot behind her, even though she wouldn’t see it. She must be insane for even thinking of doing this. She huffed out an annoyed sigh even before her mind supplied her with the word ‘necessary’.

She turned around and took the few steps needed to go stand next to the cot. She focused on her breath, the way that May had taught her, willing it to even out. Once she was sure that her heart was steady, Skye deliberately forced her mind back to the planet she had left behind.

She thought of some of her earliest memories, an exasperated Pepper bringing her food as Skye sat on a bench in her Dad’s work area, so desperate for his attention that she wouldn’t even leave for dinner but too scared of being ignored again to interrupt him.

She remembered being halfway through one of her spiels on SHIELD when the door of her van slid open, Coulson standing there like the anthropomorphic personification of The Man. She remembered nights of boardgames with the original team, back before Ward betrayed them and Trip died.

Skye remembered promising Pietro that they would have dinner at some point, and a city torn apart by robots and aliens. Skye remembered a little brother that she had loved despite everything that told her she shouldn’t, a brother who had sacrificed himself to protect her even if it meant saving the planet he was trying to tear apart himself.

Skye let the memories pour in one last time. She she breathed out and let the memories poor out along with her breath.

She opened her eyes, her heartbeat so steady that she doesn’t even really register surprise at the fact she hadn’t noticed she had closed her eyes. She looks down at the dagger, just resting on the solid block of unidentifiable material that was the cot. Skye unholstered the blaster that no longer left her side, putting it down next to the dagger.

Slowly, carefully, she lowered herself down until she was kneeling by the side of the cot. It was low enough that she didn’t need to stretch or hold herself up to be at the level that she needed to be. The thought fluttered through her mind that it might all be a test but she pushed the thought away. It was still the same cot she had slept on the weeks she had been there training.

Skye picked up the dagger with her left hand, gripping it as firmly as possible as she brought her right arm up to rest easily on the material of the cot. She raised the dagger, and hesitated. She looked at the melted stub of flesh, the small sections of the Infinity Stone visible through the gaps.

A small part of her mind was screaming. It wasn’t screaming at her not to do it, at least not because of the pain that was to come. It was screaming at her to keep the Stone with her, that what was left of her hand ensured that it would never be separated from her again.

That thought, that desire, was what finally pushed Skye.

She slammed the dagger down into her wrist, sliding it though the gaps in the bone where her forearm met her had, the blade’s task made easier by the small vibrations she turned inward on that same arm to weaken the bone. In less than a second, quicker than she could register the pain, Skye sliced off her own hand.

The pain hit.

She swallowed the scream that threatened to bubble out, biting her lip so hard that she began to bleed there too. But she had bigger problems, the blood gushing out of her arm. It a flash, she dropped the dagger, helped by the blood that slicked up the hilt and her left hand scrabbled for the blaster.

After what seemed like an eternity, her hand closed on the grip and she brought it up. Her intact hand shaking from pain and blood loss, she brought it up and aimed it as best she could towards the stump. She fired.

The second round of pain was even worse than the first, if that was even possible. The stench  of her sizzling flesh was almost too much to bear and she had to gag, forcing down the urge to hurl. Skye instinctively curled around her newly cauterised stump, the pain so bad that she couldn’t even see.

Some strength Skye hadn’t even known that she had allowed her to uncurl slightly and run her fingers across the stump as lightly as she could. It was still enough that she gave a small scream before she bit it off, too quiet for anyone else to hear only because she didn’t have the strength to scream any louder.

It was enough. The whiteness of the pain clouding her vision receded quickly in favour of the blackness of unconsciousness as Skye let her unhurt arm drop, satisfied that the injury was fully cauterised. She wouldn’t bleed out from blood loss.

The last thing Skye saw before slipping into unconsciousness, her head landed on the cot, was the sideways view of the lump of flesh and stone that she had just permanently removed from her body.

Only the Stone in her mind could explain the flash of anger she felt as she at last gave in to the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, I'm still on a fortnightly schedule but I plan to reevaluate that at the end of each month. Because of that and the fact that getting around a plot hole meant adding more to the fic than I originally thought so I don't know how long its going to end up being, I've only got this month's chapters in the schedule.
> 
> Upcoming chapters:  
> \- chapter 8: 15th of May  
> \- chapter 9: 29th of May


	9. Where Do We Draw The Line?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Skye feels awful, Thanos is melodramatic and Ward is not the creepiest thing around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I missed one. I know, I know. I made the mistake of going and seeing Civil War a couple more times and the plot bunnies attacked. I must have started something like five one-shots that I jsut kept writing until they ran out of steam.
> 
> Maybe I'll finish them one day, but for now I'm more interested in figuring out if I can integrate Civil War into what I had planned for this series of fics. I think I can, but it means dropping a couple of ideas and saying that there will only be two more fics after this one. Oh, and finishing the series before GOTG 2 comes out next year, because I know I'll want to include that to. In the interests of actually finishing this someday, I'm going back to the once a week update schedule.
> 
> FYI, I also have a mailing list now, since I've noticed that I occasionally have AO3 updates for fics I'm following disappear or arrive some time after they go up. If you'd like to be notified of updates as soon as they happen, feel free to sign up at http://eepurl.com/b3CU5z.

Skye knows she’s not alone long before she regains consciousness.

She wakes knowing that she’s been aware someone was there for a while but simply hadn’t been capable of moving. Even once she was verging on conscious, she only dimly considered moving but figured that anyone who wanted to do her harm would have already done it. The only thing waking up properly would accomplish was prevent her from getting more sleep.

She sunk back down into the darkness.

The next time she surfaced, Skye felt instinctively that she was much more awake than the first time, so much so that she might actually manage to fully wake up. The world was more than just a series of vague sensations, not that Skye was aware enough to realise that.

She opened her eyes.

It was at that point that Skye noticed she was lying on the cot. Not kneeling next to it, head resting on the block of alien material as she had been when she had passed out. She was actually lying on it, and there was no way that she could have done that herself. She recalled the vague presence she had registered before, but even that memory wasn’t clear.

Urgh. Blood loss.

Skye turned her head, expecting to find… Loki, maybe? She had definitely been expecting someone but she couldn't have said who. There weren’t many people who would help her rather than let her bleed out and Loki seemed to be the one most likely to come investigate what had happened to her if she didn’t turn up for a while.

But of all the people that might have been there, she definitely didn't expect to be Ward.

Given the choice, Skye would have preferred to pretend she was still sleeping. But Ward was clearly watching her; he definitely knew she was awake. She had lost her chance of putting it all off. She couldn’t help but feel the lack of control, a mental pain to accompany all her physical ones. Skye hadn’t ached so much since she had first tried to work her muscles in ways that she never had before. Since she had first trained as an agent.

Since Ward had been her SO.

Ward shifted ever so slightly. It was the tiniest movement of the shadows the artificial lights cast on his face that threw the bags and lines tiredness had etched into his face into sharp relief. It was a surprise; in Skye’s mind, Ward had always been this untouchable robot, even when she had seen him as SHIELD’s prisoner.

But he was more human than Skye, with her alien heritage.

“What are you doing here?” she rasped out. It took her longer to say than it should have, her voice scratchy as though she had been screaming.

Who knows? She might have been.

Ward didn’t answer. Instead, a muscle in his jaw began to jump. Skye was in no doubt that he wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. That said, she didn’t even have a very good idea as to why he had come with her. How could she know if she had gotten in the way of whatever his nefarious plan was.

What? She had other things on her mind. Little things, like the intergalactic warlord.

“That was stupid,” Ward said at last. There was a strain to his voice, one that she hadn’t heard in a long time. Not since back when he had been pretending to be a good guy. The muscles in her back tensed of their own accord. If she had been a cat, she would have been arching it and hissing at him.

“Add it to the list,” she bit out. The pain from her hand - well, her lack of it - was starting to push through the exhaustion that still numbed her mind. It made her even more tetchy than she would have been anyway.

“Surgery-”

The roughness of her voice wasn’t enough to stop Skye from making a noise of derision. “Trust one of Thanos’ people?”

“Like us?” Ward shot back.

If Skye hadn’t been completely exhausted, she would have let her frustration out somehow. Maybe she would have headbutted him again, or just screamed. But all she could managed was a pretty pathetic growl that still had the edges of her vision closing in. She blinked a couple of times and waited for her sight to come back.

Ward was by her cot when it did, close enough for Skye to finally catch how serious the strain in his face was. So, whatever he was planning required her safe. That was… oddly reassuring. She didn’t trust Ward when he was trying to help her. But knowing that he was keeping her safe because she factored into his master plan in some unknowable way?

That, she trusted.

Once her eyes had focused again, Skye silently took in how Ward practically vibrated with tension. Even when he had been acting the good guy, when she had been shot, he hadn’t looked so close to cracking. The only explanation Skye had was that he was finding space just as stressful she was.

"We're not Thanos' people."

Ward looked at her with pity. “There’s a ceremony occurring soon that says otherwise.”

“You of all people should know that other people laying claim to me doesn’t make me theirs.”

Ward’s jaw tightened even more. Skye wondered if it was possible for a human to grind their teeth so hard that the bones of their mouth broke. If it was, Ward was definitely heading in that direction. Skye kind of wanted him to do it, if just for the novelty value.

“Are you going to tell Thanos that too?”

Skye lowered her eyebrows in the closest approximation of a glare that she could manage while still so exhausted. “You know I won’t.”

“And you’re still dancing to his tune. Can you really say you’re not his?”

“Yes,” she said with more emphasis than she would have thought she was capable of. Clearly it took Ward by surprise too, because she managed to startle a blink out of him. “Keeping the fact to myself doesn’t make them any less true. That’s a definition of a fact; it exists independent of other people’s opinions and beliefs.”

“One person’s facts are another person’s delusions.”

For a moment, Skye considered continuing to argue. Instead, she closed her eyes and let out a small sigh. What did it matter? She didn’t care what any of them thought of her, least of all Ward. Arguing with someone she didn’t care about was a stupid use of her time, when she could instead be resting up as much as she was able and gathering her strength.

“When does Thanos expect me?”

Ward didn’t try to force the conversation back to the original topic. “As soon as you are conscious.”

Skye shot upright. It was a mistake; the nausea hit her and it was all she could do to stop herself from hurling. Once she had herself back under control, she looked at Ward. There was no way her horror wasn’t plain to see on her face.

“You told him?”

Ward huffed. “Not in as many words. But the remains of your hand still around the Stone when Loki took it too him was probably enough of a clue.”

Skye’s brain unhelpfully provided an image of her melted hand, cut of at the wrist and curled around the Infinity Stone. Awesome. She really wished that she could install filters on her brain. Then she wouldn’t need to think about how she lost her hand ever again.

Skye must have been silent for longer than she had realised because Ward spoke again. “If you need more time to rest, he doesn’t know you’re awake yet.”

“Don’t try to work me,” Skye snapped. Immediately, she had to force down a sigh. She had been trying not to say that for weeks, since Ward as the enemy of her enemy was better than having to struggle against him. It figured that her brain would chose that moment to be super helpful and try to offend him.

“I’m not-” Ward gut himself off and ran his hand through his hair. “What will it take to convince you that I’m not here to take advantage of you?”

“Nothing,” Skye shot back immediately. “There is nothing that you can do or say.”

She remembered all too well that she had trusted him, once.

“What do you think I’m going to do? We’re out in space! What could I possibly want out here?”

“I have absolutely no idea how your mind works,” Skye said. “Besides, I didn’t think that you were working for Hydra, either. I’m not going to make the mistake of thinking that, just because I don’t know what you could possibly hope to gain, you don’t have an ulterior motive. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

Ward shot to his feet, and began pacing backwards and forwards. He was shaken, more shaken than Skye had ever seen him. If Skye hadn’t known better, she would almost have been convinced that he was genuinely worried for her. That her removing the Infinity Stone from her body had scared him.

“I am on your side, Skye,” he said after a few seconds. He stopped, back to her. He didn’t turn around, just kept staring at the wall as he continued to speak. “You might not believe that but it doesn’t make it any less true. It would be easier to help you if you’d let me help, but I’m not going to let your lack of belief stop me.”

Skye couldn’t even be bothered to scoff. He sounded like a broken record, restating the same thing he had said again and again back when he had been a prisoner of SHIELD. That he was sorry, that he wanted to help her, that he would never lie to her again. She hadn’t believed it then, and that hadn’t changed.

Ward wanted something, and he was manipulative enough that Skye would never trust anything he did. Even if he died, she would still believe that it was part of some master plan.

Skye, at least, could learn from her mistakes.

“That’s only words,” she said quietly. With his back to her, Ward might not even have heard.

She should know better than to underestimate him. “Well, I’m in outer space and we’ll probably never see our home planet again. I guess I have the rest of our lives to prove it to you.”

Skye stared. “Why?” she asked, eventually. “I’m not going to-”

He cut her off. “I know.” It wasn’t quite a snap but it sure got close. He took a few breaths and Skye was stunned to recognise the same breathing pattern that she used to get her heart rate under control. “But it’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?” Skye couldn’t stop herself from asking.

She felt as though they had already had the same conversation a thousand times, a cycle she couldn’t seem to break. She couldn’t put a name to what she wanted from Ward, if he wouldn’t leave, and so she didn’t know how to get it. So she was stuck unless she took drastic action.

Well, she had already shot him twice. Maybe three times would be the charm.

Except she needed all the help she could get, and they all knew it. More importantly, Ward knew it. Not only did Skye have other, larger problems to deal with that meant she couldn’t give the problem of Ward the attention it deserved, it meant that it was in her interest to at least try to keep him a little bit on her side.

Gross.

“I’ve told you: it's about keeping you safe.”

“To make up for what you’ve done,” Skye finished, not even bothering to make Ward say it himself. Even she could hear the exhaustion in her voice. If she had been tired before, repeating the same endless conversation certainly hadn’t helped.

God.

Slowly, so as not to jolt herself too much, Skye began slowly easing herself upright. She had already leaned up a bit so that she could keep track of Ward, but it was only just enough to see the rest of the room. Also, it was starting to give her a crick in her neck.

Skye managed to get almost all the way upright before Ward became suspicious of her silence and turned around to see her, presumably to check if she was asleep again. The sound that he made was part exasperation, part alarm.

“What you think you’re doing?” he exclaimed.

Skye rolled her eyes. “Going to see Thanos,” she said. Ward totally deserved the expression on her face but it wasn’t just annoyance that made her short with him. She was continuing to inch up even as she spoke, and it seriously hurt.

From the look on Ward’s face, he could see what she was doing and he didn’t like it one bit. “In this condition? You have no idea what he’s got planned. You’re in no condition-”

“How long do you think he’ll wait? Long enough for me to recover completely?”

That shut Ward up but he didn’t look any happier. “You could make some progress.”

"It won't be nearly enough," Skye said. "I might as well try and take advantage of what little good opinion Thanos has by biting the bullet and just doing it. It's a long shot, but I don't have any better options at the moment."

Ward just continued to stare at her, his face more than slightly pale. Skye could only imagine what he was thinking. She told herself that she didn’t care, so long as he didn’t stop her as she continued to slowly ease herself upright. He barely even blinked, not seeming to even register that she was ignoring what he thought was best and doing what she wanted anyway.

“This is still a bad idea,” Ward said, suddenly.

Skye looked away from the side of the bed where her eyes had drifted while she was contemplating if she was ready to start turning so she could get off the cot. Ward looked, if possible, even more grim. Either he had come to some terrible conclusion or she looked even worse than she had only a minute before.

Given the way she felt, Skye suspected that it was door number two.

“Noted,” she said and she began to turn. She didn’t stop even when the pain began to get so bad that he vision began to white out again. Suddenly, the was a hand at her back, slowing her down but taking some of the effort required to turn her so that Skye’s muscles weren’t straining as much.

Skye’s body relaxed, completely of its own accord. It began to feel heavier but it was a pleasant sort of heaviness, the kind that usually signaled that sleep was mere seconds away. Instinctively, Skye jerked so as to jolt herself out of the stupor. The hand behind her hesitated for a second before continuing to guide her around.

Once she was perched on the edge of the bed, Skye looked up at Ward. The strain she had seen earlier was still there, just nowhere near as strong. But he was patient as he waited for her to recover enough that she could look up and give him the tiniest nod. It wasn’t even really thanks for helping her, it was more acknowledgment that he hadn’t just stabbed her in the back.

"Give me a second," Skye murmured quietly. She probably could have spoken louder, but it wasn't like she could hide how much pain she was in. There was nothing to be gained from trying to hide it from Ward. That ship had long since sailed.

"Of course," he said just as quietly. Without being asked, he took half a step back, giving Skye a small amount of space that she hadn't realised she needed. Without Ward right there, she felt her breathing start to ease out little bit more, as though she needed more proof that her subconscious still considered him a threat.

Once she hand managed to center herself, Skye sucked in a breath and gave Ward another nod. Without giving her any more grief, he wrapped one of his arms around her and began to lift her up. He went as slowly as he had when she had been having trouble turning but she surprised herself by not having the same trouble as she stood.

Once her feet touched the ground, Skye gave Ward the tiniest of pushes. It wasn't enough to even make him wobble if he hadn't wanted to be moved, but it was enough to tell him that she wanted to stand on her own. He hesitated, but he did let her go without saying anything. Skye refused to feel grateful about that. It was her choice, Ward didn't have the right to argue about it.

Not that it had stopped him so far.

To both their surprises, Skye managed to stay fairly stable as Ward took a full step away. Once he was sure that she wasn't going to topple without him, he backed off even further. Skye, for her part, focused on not giving him a reason to hover. It worked surprisingly well, and the throbbing pain just about everywhere began to fade slightly. She was actually able to blink a little, and be somewhat aware of her surroundings.

It was only at that point that she realised she was no longer in the clothes that she had been wearing when she had passed out. It was the same style, that alien leather designed so that it looked somewhat like the combat uniform she had been wearing when she had arrived in Thanos's domain. She had never known what they it had been intentional, that if the clothes had been designed for her, or if it was just coincidence and the design was one that provided functionality for a whole range of species.

"Who changed my clothes?" She asked. To be honest, Skye didn't know who would be worse. Ward had betrayed her, Loki was the Trickster and inherently untrustworthy and Barnes was a former Soviet soldier with PTSD. None of them were people she really wanted around when she was unconscious and unable to defend herself, never mind naked. 

"I thought you did," Ward said slowly. For moment, Skye thought that he was joking. Not because it was something that he had form with, just the opposite, but because the alternative was something that she would rather not think about. Then it hit her that he was being serious and that some unknown alien had changed her clothes.

Well, that was definitely worse than Loki, Barnes or Ward.

Given the look on Ward’s face, he was just as skeeved out as she was. And if Ward found it creepy… Yeah, that was just a whole new level of things that she really didn’t want to think about, particularly when she had other problems. And, since those other problems looked set to last a long time, she figured that she could put of thinking about it until, oh say, never.

Yeah. Never sounded good.

She glared at Ward as hard as she could. “It never happened.”

“Noted,” Ward replied without even a hint of a smirk. Clearly he realised that it was better for her sanity that she purge the entire incident from her memory.

“Give me a second,” she said as she closed her eyes and continued to breathe to stay steady as Ward pulled even farther away. She managed it, but it wasn’t easy. Still, Skye could feel herself improving. She was also doing much better that she had any right to; even though all she could do was hope that her recovery would continue and try to ignore the pain in her arm.

Stump where her hand used to be aside, it meant that she could at least try to fool herself into thinking that it wasn’t hers.

“Let’s go,” she said. She even managed to avoid her voice sounding grim.

Skye couldn’t say that she was surprised that they made slow progress. Ward already disapproved of her being up at all so he wasn’t trying to quicken the pace, and Skye was trying to go slow enough that she could continue to recover as she walked.

Skye had no idea if Ward was leading her in the right direction. She assumed that he was, however annoyed he had been. Again, relying on Ward’s self-preservation. She just wished that she had something better, another way to make sure that he was doing what she wanted him to. That said, she wished a lot of things. If she had a wish, she wouldn’t use it on that.

And she didn't have time to register his grunt of warning. Instead, she slammed into some being larger and far more sold than herself, and bounced right back. She blinked, looking upwards slightly more than she usually did and blinked again.

Barnes looked down at her, a slight frown betrayed by the tiny grooves between his eyebrows. Given how impassive he normally was, Skye was a little surprised he even allowed that much to slip through. Not that she knew if even felt that much, it was kind of hard to tell with Barnes. Still, he didn't look any happier than Ward did at Skye being up and about but she got the impression that he wasn't about to argue.

"Loki is claiming he has stalled as long as he can," Barnes said. Even though he was looking at Skye, Skye got the impression that he was talking to Ward. If she had been a hundred percent, she would have been annoyed but, as out of it as she was, she did get it. She must look really, really bad and Barnes had no way of knowing just how coherent she was.

"Told you, she murmured toward. "It needed to be sooner rather than later.”

Ward’s jaw tightened, Skye could see that much out of the corner of her eye, but he did choose to not respond. That was good; Skye hadn't meant for it to be bait but it sounded like it was as soon as it was out of her month.

Instead of reacting badly, he just nodded and gently placed a hand on the small of her back. Any other time, she would have protested but what she was still recovering. So she leaned backwards slightly, letting him take some of her weight. The relief was instant and she could feel her head clearing slightly.

"I'm sure he could delay longer," Barnes said, the groove between his eyes deepening. It was sweet that he was trying to let her feel like she could take the time to recover but they all knew it wasn’t true.

"No. I just want to get it over and done with," Skye replied.

Barnes didn't bother to hide the glance he shot to Ward. Because of the position, Skye couldn't see Ward's reaction but whatever it was must have been enough to reassure Barnes. Or, at least, to convince him that there was no stopping Skye. Maybe both. Skye didn't care. All she cared about was getting at all over and done with.

Rather than actually answering, Barnes turned slightly and made a slight motion past him with his metal arm. It took Skye a few seconds to realise he was indicating that she should start walking, even the help of with Ward pushing slightly against her back.

God, she was in so much trouble.

Fortunately, her legs decided to follow her orders, jerking into life without too much trouble. She consoled herself with the thought that, one way or another, it wouldn’t be forever. Either she managed to do whatever Thanos wanted her to, in which case she would be able to go back to her cot and sleep, or she would die trying. Not a cheerful thought, but a helpful one.

Before Skye knew it, she was stumbling out into the hangar where the small spacecraft used to jump between the asteroids were kept. Clearly they were going to the one where Thanos held court, but it just wasn’t something that had occurred to Skye in her groggy state. It was good though; it meant that she was able to collapse into one of the seats as Barnes went to the front to pilot the thing.

Distantly, it occurred to her to wonder when he had learned that but soon enough she stopped caring, dropping into a stupor that was very nearly sleep. It felt like only seconds between her eyes drifting shut of their own accord and Ward shaking her awake but it must have been at least fifteen minutes. It didn't matter.

It wasn't enough.

Skye couldn't help the absurd feeling of pride she got when she managed to stand completely on her own, without the help of either of the two villains. She deliberately pretended not to notice Ward jerking forward, ready to catch her should she stumble. Whatever his goal was, he was really committing to the act. Skye wondered if she should be impressed, before reality set in and she remembered that she had far more important things to think about.

Also, it was never okay to be impressed by Ward.

She stood, again on her own. Thankfully, she was much more steady than she had been, to the point that she caught a look of surprise on Ward’s face. Awesome. They could start a club. The ‘I can’t believe Skye is still standing’ club.

Okay, so maybe she was still a bit loopy.

She refused to let any of it show as she drew herself up and tried to look as stoic and as intimidating as possible. She strode out of the ship as best she could, hoping that she looked plausible as one of Thanos’ children.

“You ready?” Ward asked as they waited for the ship’s ramp to come down, the echo of Barnes’ combat boots on metal stopping as pulled in as close as Ward. Skye guessed he didn’t trust the ex-HYDRA agent any more than she did.

“Nope.”

“Fantastic.”

The end of the ramp touched down on the stone of the asteroid and Skye couldn’t put it off any longer. Shoulders back, she told herself, head up and walk like she owned the place. That was all she could do.

So she did it, deliberately not looking at the couple of dozen beings scattered around the edges of the asteroid, looking in at the center of the clearing, where Loki stood gesturing.

Up in his stone throne, Thanos shifted forward in interest. Loki, ever watching his audience’s reactions, shifted slightly to look behind him. For a moment, Skye caught the look of relief on his face before his eyes flickered down to the stub of her arm and he frozen.

She could surprise the Trickster. Yay.

Skye turned her attention to the person who’s opinion mattered, even if she wished it didn’t. She didn’t break stride as she passed Loki, stopping only when she came to the foot of the throne, waiting for permission to approach even further. Confidence, yes, but it needed to be balanced with respect for Thanos.

Skye was getting the hang of the whole being a villain thing. Properly, this time. Thanos wouldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt the way Ultron had. Skye was more than a little glad for that, even though it had led to her being there. That time had been her training wheels for being evil.

Thanos’ floating throne lowered slowly, with a level of dignity that was unfair in a villain. A nasty grin began to stretch his face. She stayed perfectly still, trying to be May, just letting the whole situation slide off her. In short, she did her very best to not be a part of that world. If she pretended that none of it could touch her, maybe she could fool all the others into believing it to.

"Your dedication is noted," Thanos said, pulling Skye's attention back to what was going on. It took her a second to catch up, a second in which she focused on keeping the confusion off of her face. Then she realised that what Thanos was talking about was what she had seen as the necessity of removing the Infinity Stone from her body.

Skye inclined her head in a half bad. "Lord Thanos," she said.

She hoped that none of the beings there noticed that it wasn't exactly over appreciation. It was barely acknowledgment that he had just given her a complement. She could probably make herself thank Thanos if she really had to but she would prefer not to.

Thanos stood, and Skye took half a step back so that she could see him fully without anything so undignified as craning her neck all the way back. He spread his arms above him, as though trying to call all attention to him. It was grandiose, and unnecessary. Only an idiot wouldn’t have been paying attention to him. Whatever else they may be, Skye didn't think that any idiots served Thanos. They simply wouldn't have survived.

“I ask only one thing of any child of mine,” he intoned. “That they serve Death faithfully until the day they go to her kingdom.”

Skye let the rhetoric wash over her. It was all completely ridiculous, of course. There was at least one other thing that Thanos expected of them: that they obey him without question. Skye wondered idly which would win out if those two imperatives ever came into conflict. Then she dismissed the thought

Not like she cared.

“Today will be a great day,” Thanos continued, his melodrama all the more apparent because his minions were not the kind to get excited and cheer. The entire asteroid was barren and still, the only sound and movement coming from Thanos himself. “Today I shall welcome another daughter… once she has proved herself capable of being a credit to my name.”

It was close to what Nebula had said. That probably meant it was going to be something that Skye would hear regularly, something that she would hear over and over again, if she succeeded in whatever task Thanos was about to set as her test.

Oh, yay. Team slogans. Way to stay scary.

God, she was too tired for it all.

Thanos didn't say anything else, just lowered his arms from above his head to sweep them aside at chest height. Skye turned to see what he was indicating, deliberately letting her gaze pass over the clump of Ward, Barnes and Loki. She didn't need to be distracted by them, particularly not when she could see what Thanos intended her to do. It would be hard to escape it, to miss seeing the large alien that was walking into the loose oval of watching beings.

A fight. Of course.

"To Death!" Thanos roared. Still the watching crowd made no sound, allowing Thanos's words to echo he really across the asteroid.

Skye planted her feet firmly, eyeing the alien carefully. Once again, it was roughly humanoid. Skye was beginning to wonder if humanoid's just the default setting of the universe. Maybe it had practical solution value that she and all human scientists had missed because they were so used to it. Maybe.

Suddenly, Skye grimaced. She hadn't grabbed her gun when she had left her rooms, and a quick glance down showed that whoever had changed her clothes hadn't left it in the holster while she was unconscious. A good safety precaution, but it would have helped to counteract Skye's forgetfulness.

Oh well. It wasn't like Skye was ever truly unarmed.

Ha. Unarmed.

Oh.

Unarmed.

She was down one of her arms, would be for the rest of her life. It had been necessary to get rid of the Infinity Stone. There was just one, really big problem: Skye used her hands to direct her superpowers. And now she had one less.

Something in her realisation must have flickered across her face because the alien she was meant to be fighting suddenly charged, knocking Skye out of her reverie. Unable to consider the problem hand, she dived roles out of the way, spinning the moment she was back on her feet so that she could use the moment to assess her opponent. It looked like she was going to need every single piece of information she could get.

At a quick glance, Skye could see that it was almost twice her height and three times as wide. It didn't seem to have musculature the way humans did but she had absolutely no doubt that it was the same orders of magnitude stronger than she was.

In short, much like most of her fights, she wouldn't be able to take her opponent in a straight fight. Since it was also nothing new, Skye knew more or less how to deal with: have another kind of advantage and fight as pragmatically and as dirty as necessary.

Unfortunately, her normal advantage was half as effective as it used to be.

It also occurred to Skye that she had been so isolated from all the rest of Thanos's minions that she had absolutely no idea whether most of them knew about her powers. That could be problematic; a not secret advantage was always less effective and required a different kind of strategy. And that was without even considering the question of whether it was known that she used her hands to direct her powers.

Worst came to worst, her opponent thinking she had more power than she actually did was also something that she could exploit. Unfortunately, all she had to work with at that point was a big fat pile of unknowns.

Okay, maybe she needed to take a different tactic. Lucky for her, she had a really, really bad idea.

Perfect.

She was a villain, after all. And this was when she was meant to be proving it. Fine, then. She had prove that she could be just as awful as any of them.

Shock and awe it was.

She let a smile creep onto her face. The meaning clearly wasn’t lost in translation, because the alien hesitated just a second. For a moment, Skye saw fear in its eyes. She took a moment to wonder what it had done to piss off Thanos, that he would offer it up as the sacrifice to prove his new daughter was worthy of the name.

She pushed those thoughts away. Nothing good could come of them.

Skye stood her ground, and the alien realised that it couldn’t avoid attacking. It was bigger, and apparently stronger. They both knew that it would be considered the one responsible for initiating attacks. Even though it was Skye’s test, she wouldn’t be marks down for simply staying out of the way and waiting it out.

It moved fast, but not faster than Skye could process. She could have ducked out of the way, could have evaded, but that would have defeated the point. She needed it to come to her, even if it meant timing her attack perfectly.

A second later it was within reach. Skye struck, her one hand shooting out to grab on to its upper arm. It didn’t stop moving so Skye also didn’t stop, keeping her hand on it as she spun to avoid the charge. She used its momentum as it tried to skid to a stop to swing herself up on top of its back, locking her legs around his torso.

Time stopped.

Skye dredged up every scrap of emotion that she had been pushing down, every nasty memory that she wanted nothing more than to let go. She remembered the pain as she had carved off her own arm, the loneliness of being out in the universe with only villains the company. She finally let herself think of all the people she had left behind, of Fitzsimons, of may, Bobby and Hunter, Mack. Coulson. She thought of Pepper and Rhodey.

She even thought of her Dad, her actual Dad not the alien that was trying to make her yet another one toy for his collection. She thought about all the times he had frustrated her to the point of speechlessness – her! – But whom she loved all the same, enough that she could never really leave him behind. She thought about what he must think of her now.

In that moment out of time, she wanted it all to stir and simmer, to boil into a thick emotional soup of fury. Emotions were usually just emotions, but that felt… toxic. Even the midst of anger, it still usually felt natural. What Skye was feeling felt anything but natural. It felt primal, like something that should have been burned out of humans long ago. Something… alien.

Time started again.

Everything she had been feeling, every last drop of pure toxicity exploded out of her remaining hand. It had nowhere to go except straight into the alien’s body, a ripple of horror that stopped the alien dead. The sudden jerk threw Skye right off but her hold on its arm was strong enough that she spun right around, automatically locking her legs around its chest from the front that time.

It gave her the perfect view of the resigned despair in the alien’s eyes as the first proper wave of her power tore through its body. Skye didn’t even have time to properly process the look, to realise exactly what she was doing, before the aliens legs gave out and he slammed to his knees.

Automatically, Skye unhooked her legs, dropping easily into a normal standing position without losing her grip on the alien’s arm, thanks to how much bigger he was. By the time she had blinked, taken stock of her new position, it was too late to do anything. She didn’t even know if she would have.

The shuddering that had been racking the alien stopped briefly as he locked his muscles, presumably trying to fight Skye’s powers off. But it was too late, never mind futile, and Skye could see that he knew it too. The terror was gone from its eyes. There was nothing there at all. It might as well be dead.

The first crack echoed across the asteroid less than five seconds after Skye had grabbed him, though they had seemed to take forever. It was over then, actually over not just as good as over. Suddenly, there was a chorus of bones snapping, an awful unholy symphony.

Then one. Final. Crack.

Skye let go. The alien’s corpse fell at her feet, the bones so broken and jumbled by her powers that it looked more like an old toy that had been taken apart and shoved into a bag for storage. It looked nothing like the being that it had been only moments before.

And Skye had nothing left to feel. She was done.

She didn’t even feel nauseous when she looked up at Thanos on his throne, the spin from the alien stopping having brought her around to face him. He was smiling and Skye had nothing left to feel.

He raised his arms, in welcome rather than melodrama.

“Daughter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter schedule:  
> \- chap 9: 5th of May 2016  
> \- chap 10: 12th of May 2016  
> \- chap 11: 19th of May 2016  
> \- chap 12: 26th of May 2016


	10. Let's Start A Riot In Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Barnes loosens up, everyone hates the Collector and Skye is surprisingly devious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Author bangs head on table yet again*  
> My dictaction software had been on the fritz this week guys, so I'd appreciate a heads up if you see any weird mistakes. I swear I've checked this chapter seven times and I still found weird autocorrections every time. Anyway, I think I've figured out a work around that helps so the next chapter hopefully won't take as long to edit.

Being Thanos’ daughter changed precisely nothing about Skye’s situation.

She still took orders, and gave them to her villains in her turn. She was still trapped. She was still on the hunt for the remaining Infinity Stones. She was still on the far side of the universe. Nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

The person who jumped out of the hatch onto the sticky metal platform in one of the seedier landing platforms of Knowhere looked like Skye, she spoke like Skye. She just wasn’t Skye, not really.

Skye was the daughter of a billionaire industrialist who chose to make her own way in the world. Nemesis was an adopted daughter of Thanos who did his bidding out in the wider universe to further her own agenda. The woman who paused to look out at the empty core of Knowhere wasn’t Skye. She just used her name.

If she told herself that enough times, she might even come to believe it.

She didn’t need to believe it though, just act like it was true. The last time they had been there, they had just been switching the conspicuously warlike spaceship Thanos had given them for the heap of junk that had kept them beneath the notice of the various governments and planetary territories they had passed through on their way to get the previous Infinity Stone.

This time she was going for shock and awe.

Even in the dog eat dog world of Knowhere, the crowds of various aliens parted easily as Skye strode in the direction of the nearest bar. She could pick it out from the other shacks by the light and the noise and the people spilling out. In short, the wildest place in the cesspit of anarchy and villainy that was the spaceport.

Skye stopped just short of the entrance. It was very emphatically not hesitation. She wasn’t afraid. Instead, she looked over her shoulder and couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Ward and Barnes couldn’t look any more like soldiers if they tried. Seriously, they looked like they were nothing but muscle and glowers, and even the drunk aliens three times their size gave them a wide berth.

Nothing natural could make Loki look like anything but Loki.

“Try to look a little less obvious,” she said. It was dry and biting and Skye refused to think of all the sarcastic people she had known who she had sound like when saying that. Nemesis didn’t care about anyone, especially not people half a universe away.

“Maybe we’d look less obvious if we knew what the plan is,” Ward said.

Barnes snorted. “Obvious is our default,” he said, looking over at some aliens that were beginning to look at them like they might be desperate enough to try something. The aliens slunk back into the crowd.

“You don’t say,” Loki observed. Skye pretended not to notice him sidling closer to her shoulder. She didn’t know if he was trying to be protective or ingratiating, but she wasn’t too fond of either. Maybe he’d stop if she just kept on ignoring it. Unlikely, but a girl could hope.

“Try not to draw too much attention,” Skye said firmly. There was no point arguing with them all. Much better to give an order and hope it was obeyed.

She didn’t wait around for any of them to reply, instead going straight in. Once again, aliens scattered to clear her path. Huh. Skye hadn’t realised that she was so scary.

Maybe word about Thanos’ new daughter had gotten out faster than she had expected. But, no. How would random nobodies in Knowhere be able to recognise her? There weren’t many humans out in the universe but there were enough species that were visually indistinguishable that it couldn’t be by looks alone.

Something occurred to Skye. She looked through the slight haze of smoke and terrible lighting, over to the aliens that hadn’t yet seen her coming. She watched the ripple of awareness, saw where they were looking. Not at her, but behind her.

Of course. Humanoids were not rare, but an Asgardian in the company of a humanoid with a metal arm? That was much more memorable. And once they had picked out Loki and Barnes, Skye could see that their eyes would flicker to her,and they would blanch.

Awesome. She was scary when they knew who she was but they couldn’t figure out who she was without her entourage. That… was actually the best possible outcome. It meant that she could intimidate if need be, or go unnoticed if she wanted to. Good, it was time something finally went her way.

In violation with the universal rules of bartending, whoever was running the dive made no move to protest when Skye and her guys claimed one of the few tables there without buying any drinks. In fact, everyone was so eager to not talk to them that they very quickly developed a few feet of clear space between them and the otherwise standing room only crowd.

Skye had barely even settled into her seat before small, frantic pink alien scuttled up to them. Skye didn’t need any more proof that it was one of the informants to Thanos’s organisation. No one else would dare approach them, at least not like that. Maybe they might try to challenge her if they were feeling particularly suicidal, or pissed at Thanos.

Same thing really.

Skye didn’t even need to hear the alien speak before she knew what it was going to say. It was written all over its face, the fear that that it was going to be blamed for the bad news it was bringing. But Skye had always found that to be horribly inefficient, and she intended to learn from all the stupid mistakes she had seen villains make.

Other villains make, that was.

“The so-called Guardians of the Galaxy are on Knowhere,” she said as the alien skidded to a halt, not even giving it a chance to speak. Its eyes widened and it nodded. Skye got the impression that she had just cemented her mystique.

“I guess there’s going to be a fight. What a shame,” Barnes deadpanned. Skye was beginning to wonder if she had just missed what a little shit he could be or if it was a newly developed personality trait.

Actually, she was putting her money on ‘newly re-emerged personality trait’.

Loki rolled his eyes. Subtly and with class, but he still rolled his eyes. Skye had to bite her lip to keep the straight, intimidating face that would be expected of Nemesis, daughter of Thanos. It was strange. She had relaxed a lot more since she had… vented her feelings, even as she had felt more hollow. She was feeling the urge to laugh again, and it was only a matter of time before she gave in and did it.

“Where are they?” Skye asked, figuring that she was going to have to be the responsible one.

Again, the hesitation told Skye all she needed to know about where the Guardians were. They were somewhere that she and her posse needed to be, and the alien didn’t want to tell her that. Well, Skye had already done her part; time for it to confirm that she could read it.

“They are with the Collector,” it squeaked.

“What’s the Collector?” Barnes asked, almost lazily.

Skye turned to look at him, taking her eyes off the pink alien for the first time since it had arrived. Barnes was almost sprawled in the chair, much looser than Skye had ever seen him. In a fight, he was tight and controlled, the almost single-minded focus resulting in every fiber of his being completely under his control and directed at the task at hand.

There was no denying that he was still intimidating when relaxed, but it was the intimidation of a lion that may or may not decide to eat you. The uncertainty of whether or not he would decide to do so was almost more terrifying than his usual overt intimidation. Skye was super impressed.

“A being of unknown origin, extensive resources also with no known origin and the propensity to collect rare objects, if one expands the definition of objects to include sentient beings.”

Skye saw the brief look of animal fury that flashed across Barnes’ face at Loki’s words. She turned to look back at the pink alien. “Scram.”

It scrammed.

The moment it was moving, Skye was back to looking at Barnes. She trusted her three villains in different ways, even if she really wished that she could afford to leave Ward behind on some remote planet. Loki, she relied on the most, for his experience and his knowledge of the wider galaxy.

If she had to be honest, though, she trusted Barnes the most. Even better, she also liked him, not just the most because the competition wasn’t anything to brag about beating. She flat out liked him, particularly as he was beginning to relax enough to crack jokes. But what Skye knew about the Winter Soldier and what was done to him came largely from hacking the JARVIS. He never spoke of it.

But treating sentient beings as objects clearly hit a little too close to home.

“He sounds like such a charmer,” Skye said dryly. “It’ll be such a shame to go and take one of his rarest and most valuable possessions. Particularly since I’m feeling a little bit of excessive property damage and accidental release of captives coming on.”

“Indeed,” Loki said. “I may be liar but I do try not to be a hypocrite. I’ve had the misfortune of meeting the Collector, and confess that I dislike him more than Thanos, in some ways.” Loki was toeing a dangerous line, but Skye wasn’t going to be the one to turn him into Thanos.  “Thanos, at least, does not attempt to justify his destruction by denying the sentience of other beings.”

Ward shrugged. “Sounds like a party. I’m in.’

For a moment, Skye thought that Barnes was going to say something. He opened his mouth and everything. But he snapped it shut and simply gave them an acknowledging nod. It wasn’t thanks, he was still a little too stiff and a lot too wary for that, but it was something. Skye gave him a small nod in return.

“Wait, how are we meant to find the Collector?” Ward asked.

Skye looked at him in disbelief. “You do remember that the reason Thanos wanted me enough to threaten our entire planet was because I can locate the Infinity Stones, right?”

Ward blinked, then looked slightly sheepish. “I just thought that was a big picture thing.”

“No, the closer the better. The reason Thanos sent us after the other one first was because it was stationary and unlikely to be guarded. The Collector moves this one frequently and has serious security, except when its with him.”

“Opportunity. Doesn’t come often?” Barnes asked.

“Not the way Thanos presented it.” Skye hoped that it would eventually come easily, the acting as though she didn’t want to take a shower every time she said his name.

“This Collector sounds… cautious. What do we know about the security of the Stone while its here with him?” Ward asked.

“Not a lot,” Skye admitted. “But it sounds as though he dispenses with much of the normal security around it.”

“That’s worrying,” Ward said. “If he’s smart enough to have that much security around it normally, what does he know that we don’t that makes him think he doesn’t need it here?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to draw attention from the locals,” Barnes said, his eyes doing a quick scan of their surroundings. Their buffer had actually grown since they had sat down, even though the bar didn’t seem that much more packed. Skye would put good money on the fact that a lot of the former patrons were subtly leaving to put as much distance between them and Skye’s group as possible.

There was a momentary pause while they all considered that explanation.

"No, he definitely knows something we don't," Ward said. Unfortunately, Skye rather had to agree. The being Loki had described wouldn’t go low profiles; the locals would already know he had things worth seeing.

"Well, we’ll just have to take it as it comes," she said, fighting back a grimace. "I mean, it's not like we can't take care of ourselves. Whatever he is counting on to protect the Infinity Stones, we’ll deal with it."

None of the others seemed inclined to argue. Skye looked at Loki, figuring that he was the one most likely to openly contradict her, but he simply shrugged. That actually wasn't so bad. It meant that Loki, with his better knowledge of the Collector, didn't think it was such a crazy plan.

One of the things that Skye trusted Loki to do was to make sure that he was likely to come out of it all with his skin intact. That meant that he would say something if one of Skye's plans was likely to seriously jeopardise that, to put them all in that much danger. He hadn't been shy about expressing his opinions up to that point so Skye had no reason to doubt that he would continue to do as much when it came to the Collector.

"Anyone have any objections to getting on with it?" Skye asked even though they all knew that their opinion wasn't likely to matter, in general and especially on the the time constraint of not knowing how long of a window they had a before the Collector moved the Infinity Stone.

When no reply was forthcoming, as she expected, Skye closed her eyes and let out her breath. She let the world, that bar that was significantly less noisy than it had been when they had entered, even the other villains just fall away from her mind. It was as close to the pure calmness that May had tried to teach her as Skye could get that quickly. Besides, she didn't need complete peace; she just needed some of it.

Her power positively sung as she let the tiniest of ripple flow out of her, like the tiniest tap of a tuning fork to test the resonance. She was getting good at hitting the exact frequency she needed to get a reaction from the Infinity Stones on the first try.

She felt the response of the Infinity Stone she was looking for immediately. The other ones were several seconds behind, the group of three responding faster than the lone ones. Those were the three that Thanos had, the fruit of Skye's efforts.

For the first time though, there were enough in Thanos's group that Skye could tell how many Stones she had left to collect, her attention less divided than it had been. There was the one she was going after at that moment, the one closest to her, but a few seconds after Thanos's Stones responded, she felt the tickle in her mind and a vague sense of direction that was another stone. She opened her eyes then, only to feel the niggle at the back of her mind of one more Infinity Stone.

So, there were six than.

It was odd that Skye had never had the urge to ask Thanos about it. Not that she had really had any time for idle chitchat. Still it was a useful thing to know. If she was halfway there, it meant that Skye was going to have to to start planning for the future sooner than she had expected. If they were successful with the one they were currently after, they would be two thirds of the way there. Two thirds of the way to Thanos having the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy.

Two thirds of the way to Skye being disposable to him, and two thirds of the way to Skye losing the most important leverage she had for Thanos to keep up his end of the deal to protect her.

For the first time, the fact that her situation had an expiration date truly hit her.

But that was a problem for later. Skye would have time enough to think about it all on the way back to Thanos a stronghold with the Infinity Stone. Then and there, she was under time pressure, with no way of knowing when the Collector would decide to move the Stone, ending her best opportunity to get it. And Skye really didn’t want to know what Thanos’s reaction would be if she went back without the Infinity Stone.

The other villains followed her silently as Skye got to her feet, once again taking advantage of the fear her shiny new reputation caused to get the crowds to part effortlessly. Skye didn’t really know her way around Knowhere, but then she didn’t need to. She knew more or less the direction she needed to go, and Knowhere seemed to operate on the principle that everywhere should be accessible by everywhere else, which meant that she could let her feet walk almost on automatic and she wouldn’t come across any dead ends.

Even though she was leading the way, Skye was acutely aware of the fact that Barnes was opening and clenching his metal arm repeatedly. She could only imagine the thoughts that were going through his head, but at least he was on her right, which meant that his metal left arm was mostly hidden from the curious stares of Knowhere is residents and various visitors

Even Loki seemed to have picked up on the fact that it was a good idea if that the Collector didn’t see them coming, positioning himself directly at Skye’s back, a couple of steps in front of Ward and Barnes. It meant that his fairly recognisable appearance would be at least somewhat hidden as they walked. It wasn’t quite an illusion, but it wasn’t a bad effort effect, given how little effort required.

Eventually, though, even Skye’s fairly accurate sense of direction with regards to the Infinity Stone needed fine tuning, given  the distance involved. Knowhere wasn’t a large place, but they had still been walking for going on half an hour without going so far around the outer edges that they could even be considered to have gone more than a quarter of the way around. At that distance, Skye needed to get another reading off the Stone.

She ducked into a small nook between two shacks, the tiniest flicker of her hand sending the villains into a loose semicircle blocking her from the view of any passers-by. Loki did bring up an illusion then, much as Skye wished he hadn’t when she saw what it was. The grey hide of the alien she had killed as part of her… adoption was unmistakable. It was intimidating and Skye was sure that no one would be looking in on what she was doing, not with them around her, but that didn’t mean that she wanted  to remember it.

It seemed like too much effort to argue about with Loki though, so she closed her eyes and once again let herself settled down into  that semi-calm state that made it easier to locate and remember the location of the Infinity Stones. Just like before, she sent out her ping at just the right frequency. And, just like before, it flowed back to her, telling her where to go to find it.

Clang!

Skye jerked, biting back a curse. Her head felt as though someone had just slammed together a pair of cymbals right by her ear, and she had to shake her head to dispel the feeling of disconnect, as though her head were shaking when in reality it was perfectly still. It didn’t take away the pain, but it did take away some of the weirdness she was feeling.

Barnes was standing by her when she felt well enough to open her eyes. His metal hand and was gently gripping her elbow, and  it surprised her by feeling more than a little comforting. Skye would offer him a smile in thanks just, you know, not right then. She needed to do a bit of calming breathing first, to push the pain away.

“What happened?” Barnes asked once Skye was feeling a bit better, and it must’ve showed. It was gruff, in a way that Skye didn’t really hear much of.  Barnes didn’t really talk to anyone except them, as far as Skye knew, but if he did it would absolutely be a growl. The way he was speaking than wasn’t quite that far, but he was clearly not happy.

“I got a read on the Stone,” Skye said. Her voice was thinner than she would have liked. “But something pinged me back, or closed the connection, I’m not sure. Whatever it was, it was loud.”

Loki hissed, part annoyance part anger. “The Collector must have noticed your previous attempt at locating it, and taken measures to counteract your efforts.” It was very weird to hear Loki’s voice coming out of the alien’s mouth, far too refined for the brute’s whole appearance.

Skye didn’t know how plausible that was, particularly since no one had known that what she could do was even possible before she had done it, but everyone was predisposed to think badly of the Collector anyway, so she wasn’t going to argue. At any rate, she wasn’t going to try again in a hurry. It was a good thing she wouldn’t have to; she felt confident enough in her knowledge of the Infinity Stone’s location that she could get close enough to be able to just follow the presence that the Stones had, without using her powers.

“Let’s go,” she said. “If it was the Collector, I don’t want to give him any more time to move the Stone then I have to do. I really don’t want have to do that again, particularly if it really was him that just did… that.”

She got no argument from the other villains, each and every one of them looking distinctly unimpressed with what had just happened. And that, that was one of the reasons why she trusted them all at least to an extent, however begrudgingly. Because the moment she was hurt, they were a solid wall of muscle and bad attitude between her and the outside world, perfectly willing to mess up anyone responsible for hurting her. Whatever their reasons, they all did that much, at least.

She was more than a little glad that they were less than five minutes walk away from where they wanted to be, because that five minutes seemed to stretch into a tense eternity. Even amongst the general bustle of Knowhere, Skye could pick out the low whirs as Barnes continued to clench and unclench his fist, the motion sharper and less leisurely than before.

Though she couldn’t hear any actual movement from the other two, their brooding was still almost audible. It was like a heavy cloud of silence swirling around behind her, relieved only by the heavy tramp of Ward’s boots as he came closer to stomping and marching than plain walking. Of Loki, she didn’t hear a sound. She had absolutely no doubt that he was still right there behind her.

Slowly, the amount of authentic shacks began to drop. There were still structures but the lack of clothes hanging up to dry, the considerable thinning of the crowd and the relative cleanliness told Skye that they were there for show, not for being lived in. She could only assume that something drastic was was being done to deter squatters.

There was only a few casual passers-by where Skye pulled to a stop, not needing her powers to tell her that the large building and could almost be called a palace in comparison to the rest of Knowhere was were she would find the Infinity Stone. It was the kind of place you built in a rich area of some otherwise poor city, the fruit of exploitation and extreme disparity.

The fact that it appeared untouched in such a place is Knowhere told Skye that there were far more defences than met the eye. Not that she needed to be told that; she was hardly going to underestimate someone who held an Infinity Stone, having felt the power they contained herself. If they were prepared and capable of holding the Stone for any length of time, the only security they would need is themselves.

Skye motioned to another of the convenient gaps between buildings that was the result of the haphazardness and lack of construction planning in a place like Knowhere. It was a tight fit with two reasonably bulky men and Loki, who didn’t lack as much muscle as his height gave the illusion of, but they managed it with the closeness only just verging on awkward.

“Once we get in there, no one is to touch the Stone with their bare hands,” Skye said.

The snort from Barnes made it clear just how unnecessary they thought that warning was. Fair enough; Skye’s missing hand was probably reminder enough. Still, she felt better for having reminded them. Not because she thought that they would forget, but because she wanted them to keep in perspective the fact that the Infinity Stones weren’t just dangerous when they were being used by a person. They were dangerous all on their own.

“Does anyone have any particularly creative ideas that they want to test out?” she asked.

To be perfectly fair, Skye was talking to Loki more than any of the others. She was honestly a little surprised that she hadn’t seen as much of the Trickster’s notorious sense of humour as she expected. He must be distracted, she supposed. Maybe it was the embarrassment of failing to take over Earth or maybe was something else, but the Loki that Skye had seen and come to know was nothing like the God of Lies that came across in all the stories.

“I would not dream of taking your Spotlight,” Loki said. The sharp edge of his smile, seemingly directed more of himself than at Skye, made her think otherwise.

“I’ve never been one for creativity,” Barnes said with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter how fancy you get, dead is dead. I knew that much even when I was just a sniper.”

Ward grimaced. “If we had more information, more time to prepare, maybe I could come up with something.”

“We don’t,” Skye said. She was just stating the obvious. “Well then. Shock and awe it is.”

“When the purpose is to take an object in someone else’s possession, I believe the correct term is ‘smash and grab’,” Loki said.

“So where intergalactic thieves,” Barnes said. “My Ma would be so proud.”

“More or less proud than to hear you’re working for an intergalactic mass murderer?” Ward asked. He even sounded genuinely curious. Skye decided to step in before the anger that had been simmering in Barnes since he had heard of the Collector found an outlet in fighting with Ward.

“Enough,” she said. “We have enough problems without arguing with each other. Now, if no one has any better ideas, I guess we just going to have to to get to it.”

“Shock and awe?  Doesn’t that run the risk of them seeing us coming?” Ward asked.

Skye felt the grin creep onto her face. “Oh, I don’t intend to go in via the front door.” At the puzzled looks she got, Skye rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you guys been paying attention? This place is a mining colony. Mining may not be its main trade any more, but I’ve seen enough of it around to know there’s still some going on. And know the problem with mines?”

Skye got a blank look from both Loki and Ward, both born with silver spoons in their mouths. So had Skye, if it came to that, but she had gotten away from her dad and his money as soon as she had been able. Even a reformed rich girl like herself could learn a lot while travelling across the country in a beat up old van with nothing but computer skills to pay her way.

Barnes, New York born and bred though he was, had clearly known miners before. “They’re dangerous,” he said.

“I was going to use the word unstable, but dangerous will do too.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “This is not some planet formed by  the collision of many asteroids and comets. This is the decapitated head of some long dead creature. There is no evidence that Knowhere has ever been unstable.”

Skye shrugged. “People looking to make a buck will do stupid things.  And if nothing else, the people around here are looking to make a buck. So if the entire space station shakes…”

“It won’t matter that it’s never happened before,” Barnes jumped in. “Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation will make the assumption that someone has drilled too deeply. Even if they don’t believe it’s likely, they can’t afford not to act that way.”

“What good will it do to cause an evacuation?” Ward asked. “This Collector always has a lot of security around the Infinity Stone. He’s hardly going to leave it behind.”

“No, he would not,” Loki said slowly. “Particularly if he had detected some sort of signal emanating from the Stone. He would assume that a force had arrived to claim it.”

Ward looked even more confused. “So we’re back to letting this guy know that we’re coming?”

“Weren’t you always the one who told me to consider my environment when you trained me?” Skye asked rhetorically, bringing up the time she had tried so hard to forget. Voluntarily. “Look around you. How many people here do you think could get off Knowhere in an emergency? How many of them have sufficient money or resources to buy passage in what are sure to be overloaded ships?”

“Not many,” Ward said. The puzzled look on his face said that he still didn’t get it.

“Exactly. Anyone rich enough to get off the station will do it. Unless they have a good reason to stay, like the Collector. But all those people who can’t afford to get off, who have nothing left to lose because they can’t get out of danger, they don’t know that.”

Barnes grinned, the grin of someone who realised something very terrible was about to happen to someone they didn’t like very much. “The first thing that happens during any kind of disaster. Natural or man-made.”

Ward got it.

“Looters.”

“Looters,” Skye confirmed. “There’s no way they will get past the Collector’s security. But then I don’t want them to. If they managed to get past the security, they might take the Infinity Stone. But the Collector no doubt has his own security, and the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“They’ll soften up the security, and the Guardians.” Skye would take the time to feel disgusted with herself over how impressed Ward sounded another day. Needs must, and all that.

“Even better, they’ll show us most of the security measures. And information…”

“Is what we need to bring the Collector to his knees,” Loki said with relish.

Skye’s grin, already sharp, turned positively wolfish. “Let’s rock their world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/b3CU5z
> 
> Chapter schedule:  
> \- chap 10: 12th of May 2016  
> \- chap 11: 19th of May 2016  
> \- chap 12: 26th of May 2016


	11. To Beat Smart, Fight Dumb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Collector is creepy, Peter doesn't like smart bad guys and things heat up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As those of you on my mailing list (http://eepurl.com/b3CU5z) are probably aware, I've been sick. Like, a lot sick. Just as I feel better it comes right back. Honestly, I'm still recovering so there won't be a chapter this Sunday.

The earthquake came easily.

Skye didn't even have to reach for it. It positively blossomed out from her, as though it was the easiest thing in the world to shake a space station the size of a small moon. As though that was the least she was capable of.

The entire head shuddered. It was odd to think that it had once been some giant creature, but not half as odd as the fact that Skye was still thinking about that when she was about to cause a not-so-natural disaster. She was stopping to think about the scenery, of all things.

From their hidden alcove, Skye could see a few people. At the first rumble, a couple stopped to look around. Not seeing any immediate threat, they each did whatever was their species’ equivalent of a shrug and went back to what they were doing.

Skye reached into the pressure at the back of her mind, and pushed.

 

Peter grabbed a table, barely managing to stay on his feet. Gamora simply shifted with the movement of the ground, as graceful as ever. Peter was not jealous. Not. One. Bit.

Okay, maybe just a bit.

Peter glanced around to make sure that Drax and Rocket were all right. Rocket was on top of the table where Groot rested, one paw firmly holding the edge of the pot. Drax barely shifted, even as the ground rolled beneath them, not Gamora’s grace but the simple fact that he was basically unmovable.

The shaking stopped.

Peter shifted his weight from one foot to another, testing that the floor could both take his weight and wasn’t about to go right back to rolling in ways that floors really shouldn’t.

“Are we under attack?” he asked because he’s really not used to on-planet protection details. He’s used to looking out the window of a space ship to see what is always an uncomfortably large armada after whatever it was that he had.

“It appears to be an earthquake.” Gamora’s voice was positively dripping with distrust. Yeah, when Peter stopped to think about it, it seemed awfully convenient. Like, the Aether - and he was still pissed at the Collector about having that - had been behaving weirdly and then there was an Earthquake.

Peter wasn’t buying what they were selling.

“Some moron’s going to break the frigging atmosphere to get one of the stupid Stones,” Rocket grumbled.

“I did not know that an atmosphere was something that could be broken,” stated Drax, who was improving in his grasp of metaphors and smilies when there was a verbal signpost, such as ‘like’, but who had yet to grasp some of the finer points without that help.

“Atmosphere generators require a planet to be in one piece. Breaking it up is… not advisable,” Gamora said patiently. Of all of them, she was best at the succinct explanations needed to get Drax up to speed.

“Seriously, who would risk spacing the lot of us?” Rocket continued to grouse.

“Someone desperate,” Peter replied, finally confident enough in the stability of the floor to begin walking in the direction the Collector had gone. He almost didn’t hear Gamora’s reply.

“Or someone who really knows what they’re doing.”

 

The survival instinct required to continue among the living on Knowhere kicked into overdrive in most the of the mining colony’s inhabitants. Most of the scum of the universe that ended up there had been to - and been kicked off - enough planets to be able to recognise the feeling of an earthquake. And those that hadn’t were at least savvy enough to be concerned by the unusual occurrence.

They started getting the hell out of there.

 

“I will not play into the hands of one of Thanos’ lackeys.” It was the closest that Peter had ever seen the Collector get to a growl. Even the absence of his weird sing-song way of talking was pretty unusual.

“Wasn’t going to recommended it,” Peter said as placating as possible.

The Collector turned from the object he had been admiring - an old book that appeared to be made from skin, yuck - to give Peter the same weighing look he had since the alien had learned that Peter had survived holding the Infinity Stone on his own. Peter did his best to hide how uncomfortable it made him.

“Then why are you here?”

Peter held his gaze as best he could. “Figured I’d check if there were any security measures you wanted us to start up.”

“No.” The Collector turned his his back on Peter abruptly.

Breathe. In and out. Think of the obscene amount of money the Nova Corps were paying them to make sure that Thanos’ minions didn’t get the Collector’s second Infinity Stone, because they’re next stop would inevitably be Xandar.

But that didn’t mean that Peter felt the need to be any more polite and talk to the Collector as he left the room.

 

Skye wedged herself against the place where the two shacks met, the back of the nook. From what she could see between the guys standing at the edge of the nook so that she was blocked from the view, the Knowherians were scurrying about just as she expected.

Skye had nothing better to do than watch but it didn’t take her level of attention to realise that there were a lot more out and about than there had been before. A good portion of them looked mildly panicked, with an edge of resignation. These were people who had never gotten a break in life and hadn’t gotten one at the beginning of a natural disaster.

Excellent.

Skye let another tendril of her power loose to start the shaking again.

 

Gamora sank gracefully onto one knee, preferring to not go crashing to the ground over keeping her pride. No doubt Peter would be delighted to find that she could be shaken off her feet but he had yet to return from checking up on the Collector so Gamora was spared that annoyance, at least.

“Do they wish entry?” Drax asked.

Gamora looked over at him, perplexed. She had no idea what he was talking about, and frowned when she saw that he was looking out of a window. A terrible thought occurred to her and she pushed herself to her feet, hurrying over to where Drax stood despite the still rolling floor. She looked out the window.

Outside, a dozen or so locals were standing in groups of three or four, barely keeping their footing as the ground continued to roll and yet still casting looks at the Collector’s mansion. They were far enough away that Gamora couldn’t see the looks on their faces but she could well imagine the look of disgust and simmering anger.

“No,” she told Drax. “They want trouble.”

“If its trouble they want, I’m more than happy to oblige,” Rocket said. He didn’t even bother to come over to the window to see. His primary concern was, and always would be, Groot.

"The last thing we need is more trouble," Peter's voice replied before Rocket could continue.

She turned to look at him. He had the same tightness around his eyes that he had every time he talked to the Collector recently. Peter didn't like the Collector's interest in him, and frankly Gamora didn't either. She didn't think it was likely to become a threat, but it still felt… greasy, to borrow a term from Peter.

"What is the plan, O Fearless Leader?" She asked, trying to put a small sliver of humour into her voice to lighten his mood. It was not often a role that she played – Peter was normally the one keeping them as lighthearted as they could be – but it did have some success. Peter’s shoulders loosened somewhat, at least.

"We hold tight. Tivan doesn't want to give Thanos's people an opening, and as much as I hate to say I agree with him. Maybe this is a trap, maybe it isn't; either way we won't be nearly as protected if we try to move out in the open."

Rocket sneered. "Backing down from a fight, Quill?"

"Hey, you know me. Fighting is one of the things I do well. But do you really want to risk Thanos getting his hands on yet another infinity Stone?"

It was rhetorical, and they all knew it.

"Whatever, Quill," Rocket said instead of either apologising or acknowledging that he was wrong. Gamora held back a roll of her eyes. Peter was even less restrained, letting out a half of annoyance but clearly giving up on trying to force the issue with Rocket.

He walked over to the window where she and Drax were still standing, taking a peek outside. He frowned. "I've a bad feeling that were going to be getting a fight, what we want one or not."

 

Outside, the residents of Knowhere were getting exponentially more restless as the shaking continued. More than a few of them had already taken to spaceships, and those who wouldn't have left anyway were strongly considering making their way to their ships and getting into orbit, if just to avoid having them stolen by those more desperate.

In short, in the less than five minutes of the shaking had started, close to a fifth of Knowhere's population had left the surface. At the rate that was increasing, it would be less than half left within another ten minutes.

After that, no one would be able to leave. There would be no places left in the spaceships.

 

Skye relaxed, reining in her power. It was annoying, but it actually took more effort to restrain her powers to a low-level rumble than to fully unleashed them. And, yeah, she kinda wished she could. It wasn't smart, and she would like to think that she wasn't so far gone that she would deliberately cause as many casualties as that was likely to, but that didn't stop her from dreaming.

“Everything okay, Skye?” Ward asked, turning slightly so that he could see her. She met his eyes as evenly as possible.

“I could do this all day.” It was one hundred percent true. Skye was barely using even a fraction of her power. Distantly, she remembered Sif’s reaction to her powers, not to long before her whole awful adventure had started. The Asgardian had said that she could tear continents apart.

That was beginning to feel worryingly plausible.

Ward nodded, turning back around to look out. Over his shoulder, she could see a small crowd beginning to gather outside of the Collector’s mansion. No one was looking particularly unhappy, but the potential of violence was simmering in the air.

She started when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. She looked up at Loki. “In situations such as this, it helps to focus on the destination, rather than the journey.”

“Situations like this?” she asked, feeling like her teeth were on edge.

“When the means seem distasteful or excessive.”

Skye nodded. She could feel her jaw still flexing. “A few months ago I would have said that meant you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

There was something dangerously like sympathy in Loki’s gaze in the seconds before he responded. “I suppose it is not so easy for those who have always had the luxury of not needing to stray beyond what is clearly noble and right.”

“That wasn’t me. I… wanted to be an embarrassment to someone, to take them down a level. I was a little naive and sheltered. I regret the things I did. Not because they were bad, but because it helped those who did bad things.”

There was an edge of surprise to the way Loki was looking at her, as though he wasn’t just caught off guard about what she was saying but hadn’t realised that she was still capable of surprising him. The emotion disappeared quickly, though.

“It is not the same, though. I think you know that.”

“It’s not,” Skye agreed grimly. “Now I can see the harm that I’m causing.”

Ward didn’t turn around as he spoke. “Rising Tide?”

Skye considered not reply, but it would be nothing but petty. He knew. She lost nothing by confirming it. “Yes.”

“Better than HYDRA,” he said. Skye gaped at his back. Despite all that he had said back when he had been a prisoner, Ward had never been so matter of fact about when his loyalties used to lie, and might still. Annoyingly, Skye found it marginally more convincing than his apologies.

“Remember why I’m doing this?” she asked Loki, deciding it wasn’t an argument that she wanted to revisit with Ward.

“I wish I could offer more aid,” he said. It sounded sincere, for whatever that was worth. “But this is a burden none can bear for you.”

“You still consider it a burden,” Barnes said. “If it helps, we’ve all been further gone.”

“So easy’s bad?” Skye asked, trying for a teasing tone and failing miserably.

“For people like us?” Barnes returned. “Usually.”

“Hard is also bad too,” Loki contributed, oh so helpfully.

“In short, doing what’s necessary sucks,” Ward concluded.

“God, you guys are a real barrel of laughs. I think I’m going back to generating earthquakes now. That’s more cheerful.”

 

When when the locals finally began tearing at the door to the Collector’s mansion, it felt inevitable.

Peter watched it all from above, well aware of Gamora's quiet presence beside him. Further back, Drax was sharpening his knives while Rocket murmured quietly to Groot.

Dealing with looters was not what Peter had signed up for, and he really didn’t want to have to deal with them. Part of that was because he had been one himself on a couple of occasions. 

The other, bigger part, was the fact that he wouldn’t mind Tivan being deprived of his collection. Sure, anyone living on Knowhere wasn’t likely to be a great substitute but Peter didn’t care about that either.

He just put the Collector in the category of one hundred percent a dick.

“Let’s not do anything,” Peter said as Gamora began to slowly, reluctantly pull away from the window. “Unless they get near the Stone, its not our problem.”

Gamora gave him a look. “Nova Prime will not be pleased.”

“Nova Prime is paying us to stop Thanos from getting the Infinity Stone, not play guards to all of Tivan’s Collection. She’s not even paying us to stop looters from getting the Stone.”

“Not like any of those losers outside could even hold the Stone for long,” Rocket called over. “Next time, let’s negotiate for that. I love money for doing nothing.”

Gamora didn’t manage to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “Nova Prime is not likely to fall into that trap. She would know that the effort required on our part is not worth whatever money we are asking for.”

“No, but the risk to both the galaxy and the balance between major space powers might be.” Peter grinned; so they weren’t entirely heroes. “Great idea, Rocket.”

The roar from the crowd of would-be looters drifted in through the window, interrupting any further conversation. Peter looked back outside, feeling Gamora shift to do the same. They might be friends but they had both learned situational awareness young and by necessity; they always knew where the other was.

Down below, the door to Tivan’s mansion was hanging half off its hinges. What had originally been a crowd of a dozen aliens of a handful of different species had swollen to close to fifty beings with more species than Peter could count. Oh, okay. That was starting to get beyond a small party of looters. That was starting to get to serious numbers.

“I do not like the size of that group,” Gamora voiced Peter’s thoughts for him.

“Yeah,” he replied, frowning. He supposed that he should have expected it given the planet of ne’re-well-dos and opportunists that they were on, but he honestly hadn’t expected the crowd to grow that fast. It was starting to get to the point where it might actually be a problem protecting… the… Stone.

Son of a bitch.

“They set off the earthquake deliberately,” he breathed.

Gamora shot him a funny look. “We have already surmised it is more than likely.”

“Not to get us to move the Stone,” Peter said, suppressing the instinct to bang his head repeatedly against the wall. “To get the locals to test out our defences.”

There was a slight pause as the others thought it through. “That is not honourable,” Drax growled.

“No, but it is clever,” Peter replied, mind already racing. “Either we risk someone else getting their hands on the Stone, someone easier for Thanos’ minions to kill than us, or we tip our hand.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I really, really hate it when the bad guys are smart.”

Rocket snorted. "Clever? Clever ain't a problem. Best way to deal with clever is to be really, really stupid. They never planned for it."

 

Peter couldn't help himself. "Well, you'd be the expert on really, really stupid," he said, not even a little bit repentant.

"Nice, Quill, you come up with that yourself?” Rocket said. Apparently rolling his eyes was too much effort to waste on Peter’s joke.

“Children,” Gamora said. “Looters?”

“We ain’t exactly subtle. So don’t be subtle. Just scare the looters off with a-”

“Show of force,” Gamora murmured.

“I think Rocket was going to say really big explosion,” Peter said.

“Eh. Same thing,” the raccoon said, shrugging.

Gamora looked at the both of them. “That is the course of action you wish to take? Being stupid?”

“Why mess with what works?” Peter asked, giving her his absolute largest grin.

The look Gamora shot him made it clear how much she regretted throwing in her lot with them. It would be more impressive if Peter didn’t see it at least several times a month.

And she never left.

 

It had been many years since Taneleer had reason to be genuinely concerned. About anything.

Thanos! To think that the jumped up monstrosity would try to take what was Taneleer’s was an abomination. His Collection was all that gave him pleasure, after so many centuries. Galaxies went on, ever-changing but also ever the same. Despite the egos of billions of pathetic ants, their existences were nothing special, nothing interesting. Their pettiness and their crimes and their transgressions; they were all old hat.

Was it any wonder that Taneleer searched out rarities for his collection?

Times change, moralities were flexible. But rarity lasted, proof positive that the universe had more yet to offer him. It had been many millennia since such events, events were the of an epic. It had been longer than it ever had before, in the previous gap had been the longest before it. Such events were spacing themselves further apart, stretching the patience born of having as much time to spend as he wished.

He remembered a time before the Infinity Stones, but only just. He had been young then, such a very long time ago. He remembered their forging, and the price that had been paid by a being much stronger being than he to create them.

Taneleer had no part in hiding the Stones, though he had thought to search for them several times these long, hard years. Not because he wanted to use them but because they reminded him of a time when he was fresher, when the universe was full of wonder. They reminded him that time never ceased to take, even when death did not.

He looked at the swirling red and black of the Aether. He should have known that it would bring trouble. The Infinity Stones - and what they had been before - had always brought destruction. Considering the source, there might well be a metaphor there but Taneleer had learned long ago that philosophising would bring nothing but unhappiness. He avoided it as much as possible.

Distantly, he could hear the roars of the rabble. Whatever they thought that they could accomplish, they were wrong. If they dared covet - never mind touch - his Collection, he would tear the entire sector apart. He would not lose what little comfort they gave him for the momentary prosperity of a few beings that would not exist for more than a blink of an eye in comparison to Taneleer.

The thought of the Infinity Stone being taken from him was even worse. Far more than the excitement they brought, he remembered the time before they were separated. Vaguely, it was true, as quite a lot of time had passed, even by his standards.

But he would never let the Mad Titan bring them together.

 

Skye slipped easily into the crowd. The disapproval of her villains positively radiated through the already charged atmosphere. The looters grew even louder, as though sensing the increase in the disatisfaction.

There was something almost connected about the way crowds behaved. No, not connected. As though the individuals had some independent consciousness working together under the surface, acting through each being there without their knowing.

There was something almost comforting about being amongst such unity, even if she was using it as a cover. Skye couldn’t help the pang of longing that went through her. What would it be like, to be part of such a group, acting for their own interest and yet all pulling in the same direction?

Rather like her time at the Rising Tide. Maybe even like when she was part of the team on the Bus, before all the structure and rigidness of SHIELD proper made its way in.

Rather like her little cabal of villains.

Skye made very good use of the unusual pointiness of her elbows to move to the front of the crowd with the minimum amount of force possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Barnes having more trouble, mainly because of his bulk. Even if he was better able to push his way through, there was more of his that needed to be pushed.

As the crowd continued to surge forward, half carrying Skye along with it, she lost sight of Barnes. For a moment, she considered trying to stop and wait for him but the pressure of the crowd moving her along was enough for her to figure out how unwise that idea was.

The sound exploded. At least, that was what the sudden increase in volume caused by entering the Collector’s mansion felt like. The entrance hall - and Skye really did mean hall - contained the noise even if the interior was huge, echoing it back at them. Skye wondered if it had been done on purpose so that visitors couldn’t pass unnoticed.

Suddenly, her senses began screaming danger. Skye reacted on pure instinct, beginning to push herself towards the closest side of the crowd until she was no longer being carried along by it even though she had no idea what had made her so concerned.

Now that she was out of the still moving crowd, Skye had a chance to breathe, leaning against a wall. She hadn’t realised how shallow and rapid her breathing had been, caught up in the excitement of, well, what would be a riot if there was any law and order to riot against. She had been terribly sloppy and she was glad that none of the others had seen her so. She wasn’t an inexperienced rookie anymore, to make mistakes like that.

She still couldn’t see what had her senses tingling. As it turned out, most species in the galaxy were the same height as the average human or higher. Skye was not average, and so she was stuck with the indignity of extending her toes to try and gab every extra inch she could.

Loki practically swanned out of the crowd. Not even being amongst the rabble of Knowhere was enough to ruffle his feathers. Even that didn't cling to his clothes, unlike everyone else. Skye was going with the 'magic' explanation. It was the only one that made an ounce of sense.

“Problem?” he asked. Something about his tone made Skye think that he knew there was, had noticed it himself but wasn’t letting her know for whatever reason.

Skye let her lips purse slightly. “Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on just what it is, though.”

Loki nodded gravely. It was hard to tell if it was because he believed her, he knew something she didn’t or her was just humouring her. She didn’t think it was the last one though. Loki had never treated her with anything less than complete respect.

Whatever Loki is reply was going to be, it was cut off by Barnes shouldering his way out of the crowd. Surprisingly, he looked more at ease than he had going in. Or perhaps it was just that he had managed to track down, make sure she was okay. At any rate, there was even the tiniest bit of perk to his step, not quite a bounce but close, as he pulled up level with them.

“Did we loose Ward?” Barnes asked. He continued before either of them could reply. “What a shame.”

Skye’s lips twitched without her approval. It was heartwarming to see Barnes so much more relaxed but perhaps it was neither the time nor the place. And mocking allies probably wasn’t a particularly good tactic, either.

Of course, that was the moment that Ward turned up. While the rest of them hadn’t seemed of too much trouble moving through the crowd, Ward had the tiniest of limbs and the beginning of a black eye. Skye had the uncharitable – but totally deserved on Ward’s part – thought that he must have been his usual ‘charming’ self.

“The mob must’ve hit a dead end. There’s people piling up at the front, all of a sudden. And, in this crowd, the results aren’t pretty,” Ward said.

Skye’s eyes flicked automatically to Loki, to see if he would use that opportunity to let on if he knew what was the problem of the front. But he just looked at her calmly, giving no indication if he understood what she was trying to get him to do. Whatever his reasons, Loki was keeping it a secret.

Barnes spoke before Skye got around to replying. “You should go check it out. You won’t get crushed by the crowd. Probably.”

The look that Ward shot him was particularly poisonous. Skye resisted to bang her head against the building at her back. Apparently their earlier truce was over. Why, Skye had absolutely no idea, and nor did she care. That would be an issue for another time. But, seriously, they couldn’t have waited until they had the Infinity Stone and where on their way back to Thanos’ domain?

It wasn’t like Skye had left them alone for very long. She honestly couldn’t see how they could have had a falling out in that time without putting in conscious effort.

It was, well annoying obviously, but Skye couldn’t help the prick of annoyance, but also something more than that. Something dark and sticky. Something that was more than a little fearful, fearful that her influence over them was waning, with all the increase of danger to her that meant.

Suddenly, the extreme overreactions that villains were prone to made a lot more sense. Even if they weren’t in Skye’s situation, that didn’t make them any more secure. In fact, with no prospect of it ever ending, they would be even more twitchy. Their reputation was quite literally their life, and they were always playing for keeps.

Skye needed to get back to Earth. She was starting to think too much like one of them.

Skye’s ears picked up the scream before she even consciously figured out what it was, her head whipping towards it. Around her, the other three did the same. By the time she realised what it was over the fading noise of the crowd as they finished streaming past were Skye and the others had ducked off to the side, another one had sounded.

Skye barely had to meet Loki’s eyes before she knew that she had his agreement for what she was about to do. In a flash, she was moving at him, resting her remaining hand on his shoulder despite the height, and pushing off with her legs to spring up. Loki’s hands closed easily around her waist, giving her the boost necessary to hook her legs over his shoulders in a parody of a child being carried by a parent.

From her vantage point, Skye had a much better view of what was going on and she had at her normal height. Though the crowd had passed, that didn’t mean that she had been able to see beyond one or two aliens in. With her height, she could see right over them to the core of the crowd.

And she could see why they were screaming.

Up close, it probably would have looked like a wall of flames. To Skye, anyway, though it barely came up to shoulder height to most of the aliens. Still, with the aliens at the back of the crowd who couldn’t see what was happening pressing forward, those at the front were being pushed into the flames.

And the flames were moving.

Skye could see very distinctly that they were moving from the far end of the hall towards where Skye and her posse were. They were moving fast too, probably faster than Skye was capable of running. Not that it mattered; even if they could outrun it, that would just take them back outside, and back to square one. She simply couldn’t leave.

Time to take a different option.

She unhooked her legs from Loki’s shoulders, dropping to the ground. She pretended not to notice the steadying hand that Barnes hovered by her shoulder. She didn’t need it, and she knew he wasn’t expecting acknowledgment.

Once she had her feet firmly planted shoulder width apart, she raised her remaining hand, pointed directly at the wall they had been standing beside aid. Behind her, the screams were growing ever louder, as more and more of the looters realised the danger therein. Skye could only see them out of the corner of her eye so she couldn’t tell if the ones at the back had yet realised that they needed to run as soon as possible if  they wanted to have a chance at surviving. She didn’t think any would survive, and she knew that they likely wouldn’t have been in such a dangerous situation her hadn’t been for her.

She didn’t care. She hadn’t forced them to make bad choices. She had just predicted they would, and taken advantage of it.

The concussive blast exploded out of her hand, slamming  into the wall  without Skye that point, the point where her powers to her that she used them stop at about her, but frankly she had been displaying more worrying signs. Skye had no illusions: she had blown right past okay a long time ago.

She half hopped over a large piece of metal that had broken out of the wall from the blast, not bothering to be overly cautious as she went through the hole in the wall. After all, she had created it. It wasn’t like anyone would be on the other side waiting for them. Not even the three overprotective worry warts made a noise of protest as they followed her through, and if they were moving a little faster than they normally would, none of them are gonna mention the wall of fire.

Skye could smell burning flesh.

“This was way too easy,” Barnes said, just as Skye broke into a trot to get away from the increasingly close smell of burning.

“Perhaps it only seems that way to you because I’m doing all the work,” she said him over her shoulder. The small grin she got in response would be something to celebrate later, once they were out of danger. They needed to return to the task at hand.”

“Perhaps we should pick up the pace,” Loki said. There wasn’t really any strain in his voice but it made it abundantly clear that he was measuring  how far away the file was at they had no way of knowing would only work in the room in the entrance hall where it originated or if it would follow them.

If Skye had to guess, she would say it was some kind of service corridor for whoever the Collector employed to keep the place clean. Not that they were doing a good job; there was a thick layer of dirt over everything. Skye could feel it coating her already filthy boots. There was a metaphor in there somewhere about villainy but she never had the time to think about it any more.

The sound of voices teased at her ears. She didn’t recognise the voice, not exactly. But she recognised the cadence echoing up ahead. She recognised the faint drawl of a midwestern accent, though it made no sense in the depth of space.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were up ahead.

Skye squared her shoulders. Things were about to get real.

She wouldn’t be leaving without the Infinity Stone.

 

“I thought you said it would be an explosion!” Peter didn’t even bother to keep the volume of his voice under control.

Rocket was completely unrepentant. “Come on! The moving wall of fire was so much cooler.”

“How is that even possible? Doesn’t it, like, break physics?”

Rocket looked at him, completely deadpan. “Yup.”

Of course it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/b3CU5z
> 
> Schedule:  
> -chap 11: 3rd of July 2016  
> -chap 12: 10th of July 2016  
> -chap 13: 17th of July 2016  
> -chap 14: 24th of July 2016  
> -chap 15: 31st of July 2016


End file.
